


Dust & Shadow

by Portrait_of_a_Fool



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Global Pandemic, Graphic Depictions of Physical Illness, Horror, M/M, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:57:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 79,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Portrait_of_a_Fool/pseuds/Portrait_of_a_Fool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Valentine's Day, 1991, the world begins a slow fall to its knees. Sam and Dean grow up in a world ruled by fear as the survivors huddle in the valley of the shadow. It is in this world that they learn the true meaning of the word love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/). Many thanks to [Culper355](http://culper355.livejournal.com/) for [**the fantastic art**](http://culper355.livejournal.com/11296.html) she made me and for not getting totally fed up with my neurotic, writery ways. Also, thanks to [Lustmordred](http://lustmordred.livejournal.com/) for doing the final edit on this thing; she did a great job even though she was incredibly ill at the time. Much love to both [Culper355](http://culper355.livejournal.com/) and [Lustmordred](http://lustmordred.livejournal.com/) for being awesome individuals and not threatening to bludgeon me to death a single time.

_“We see death coming into our midst like black smoke,  
a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has  
no mercy for fair countenance.”_

— Jeuan Gethin

The plague walks out of a laboratory on the twelfth day of February, 1991. It’s just after four in the morning when it wanders out of its carefully controlled environment to the sound of blaring alarms. It scurries to the four corners and the little directions in between, carried on paws and in the folds of clothes, the tight strands of dreadlocked hair. It even catches a ride on a faux quail feather in the band of a hat; a touch of whimsy for sure. Those carrying it are in a hurry, the ones with two feet anyway, so its escape is a speedy one.

It runs off into the night, across a blacktop parking lot and down a grassy hill. It crosses the street and darts quick as a streak into the shadows thrown by young poplar trees. It burrows into a pile of soggy leaves, seeking warmth even as its host sneezes bloody foam, leaving it squirming on the moldy soil. The plague careens around a merry-go-round and underneath a swing set. Then it’s off again, through another stand of trees and down another hill as an engine roars into the night, away from the place of its imprisonment.

One of its hosts drops dead beside a small stream with a bloody gurgle and one last kick of feet. A fish eats a piece of the plague as it flounders in the water, a tiny speck on the burbling surface of the brook. Another piece hops onto a passing groundhog. The flea it lives in bites the groundhog’s back. The flea is starving. No matter how much it feeds, it is never full anymore. It regurgitates blood from its infected foregut into the miniscule wound like a tiny hypodermic needle full of death. Then it bites again. Again. It’s _so hungry_.

The sound of sirens wailing fills the air and the groundhog, unhappy with the sudden racket, ambles off after a quick scratch of its side. Policemen climb out of their patrol cars and shine their bright, bright lights at the wide open door. The beam of one flashlight pins a rat in its glare. It carries on its slow way, staggering along like a drunken sailor. Beads of blood glitter in its whiskers like tiny garnets. A policeman sees the rat and tries to catch it. Who knows what experiments they’re doing in the lab? He doesn’t want anything getting out into the public. His rationale, while good intentioned, is poorly executed with very little thought past him maybe being called a hero. 

The rat, sick and confused with fever, bites the concerned officer for his troubles. In retaliation, the officer curses as he crushes the rat’s fevered skull in with a small _crunch_. Plague oozes out all over the ground and the officer goes to let another policeman help him tend his wound. While they do that, about twenty starving fleas hop free of the rat’s already cooling corpse. Thanks to the speedy response time of local law enforcement, the plague catches a few more rides.

Dawn will bring panic and quarantine measures, but it’ll be too late and the people in charge will know it. They’ll curse themselves for what they’ve done and they will try, try, _try_ to fix it. They will all fail—they’ve accomplished what they set out to do incredibly well. It would be a cause for celebration if the end result wasn’t so tragic. All they can do is sit back and count down the hours until the first case is reported.

~*~*~*~*~*~

While they are still pulling their hair in nervous frustration and shame, trying to decide what to do, a boy wearing a hat with a faux quail feather walks through the final security check at the airport. Halfway to the lounge, he feels a tickling flutter in his chest. He clears his throat once and that sets off an even more vigorous flutter in his chest. He’s felt pretty bad since late the night before and now he knows for sure he’s coming down with something. At least he’s headed home where he can rest up in his bed and not have to worry about crashing on a friend’s sofa while he recuperates.

Another flutter deep, faintly painful in his chest makes his mouth twitch with annoyance and discomfort. He wipes sweat off his warm cheek and clears his throat again. The wings fluttering in his chest with an itch-like ache unfurl completely and the boy begins to cough. Blood sprays from his mouth and he has a split second to be horrified before his stomach gives a mighty heave and he vomits. That, too, is red with blood and his insides feel like they’re full of powdered glass. He is terrified and wants to cry out for help, but his throat is full of blood and he can’t. He falls to the ground and his hat topples from his head to go rolling off into the crowd that’s gathered around him.

That day, courtesy of the young man in the hat, the plague catches flights to France, England, Italy and Germany, not to mention all over the United States and a few places in Canada. It is getting a chance to revisit old stomping grounds in Europe though. Ah… the nostalgia beckons like an old flame. Europe’s not exactly the playground of its youth—it’s far too old for the 14th century to make it feel young—but damn, it had one hell of a good run there. It settles in and enjoys the in-flight movie, breathes in and out of the closely confined air and toward the end of its journey, two of its new hosts begin to cough.

In a little while, as his plane taxis down the runway, a man from Milan will notice a tingling in the ends of his fingers. A look at them will show they’re a touch darker than they should be and they feel cold. He already suspects he’s coming down with something, he just hopes it isn’t too bad. On a different plane out there, a woman from Munich feels a similar sensation in the tips of her toes. A couple headed home to Honolulu will begin to feel a bit feverish about halfway through their flight. 

The plague is being scattered to the four corners on a global scale. It couldn’t be happier. It is February 14th, Valentine’s Day. No one knows it yet, but forever after, Valentine’s Day will have nothing to do with love and everything to do with death.

~*~*~*~*~*~

As the plague begins to wrap the world in its stinking embrace, a widower named John Winchester drops his two young sons off at school before he goes on to work. He’s unaware of the terror already coming to life in Massachusetts. By lunchtime the media will have hold of the story. Hospitals will start to fill up by dawn of the next day. The day after that, 85 people will be dead in Massachusetts. New Jersey will see its first wave of death begin shortly thereafter. About three days later, mass hysteria will follow.

By the end of the week, three times the first wave of 85 will be dead in Massachusetts. Connecticut will be desperately playing catch up. In New York City, someone will notice a tingling in the ends of their fingers. In Trenton, New Jersey, a single mother of two will check on her youngest child who is coughing in her bedroom. She will get blood spatter all over her face. In less than two days, their whole little family will be dead, huddled together in the mother’s bed because no doctor would see them.

As the plague begins its swift crawl across the eastern seaboard, borne along expeditiously by humans that share with the local rodent populations along the way, even more people will begin to feel a touch ill. More mass hysteria will follow and the National Guard will be sent to try and control the crowds. At least until the soldiers start getting sick, too. Then they’ll be dropping dead on patrol or abandoning their posts in terror. Many, many people will think they can outrun it, but the plague will hop right along behind them like Pepé Le Pew chasing a paramour. 

By the end of the month, the streets of Boston will take on a haunted, desolate look. The wailing of terrified survivors and the cries of the dying will echo down its streets. _Yersinia Pestis_ has come a’calling with a thirsty vengeance thanks to the good scientists that kept it locked up in their laboratory. The nice men and women in lab coats made it stronger and faster; they helped to restore some of its previous glory. They reminded it in good time how to disrupt the nervous system and drive people mad even as they lay dying. Frankly, they reinvigorated it to its utmost potential and then they gave it a dose of high potency vitamins. If the plague could talk, it would say, _Thank you so very much! I just want to kiss you all!_ The scientists did their part, now the plague has to keep up its end of the deal. Since it can’t speak, it’ll have to show its gratitude in other ways.

On that ill-fated Valentine’s Day, John watches the evening news. He obviously doesn’t know any of that yet, but what he sees is enough to have him wanting to hug his children close. His youngest son, Sam, reads a book he got from the school library while his oldest, Dean, stares at the television screen. Dean doesn’t completely understand what the news lady is saying, but he gets the general idea fine: something very, very bad is happening.

The anchorwoman’s eyes are wet and wild looking as she says, _There has been a rare outbreak of bubonic plague in Massachusetts as well as several European countries and China. Although there are cases of bubonic plague and pneumonic plague being reported, there are also several reported cases of an even rarer strain of the plague called septicemic plague. We’ve received reports from Boston, London and Munich confirming this. Italian and Chinese officials have confirmed instances of plague outbreak, but have yet to release official statements. People are being urged to stay indoors and to keep away from any unfamiliar animal, particularly rodents. More on this story as it develops._

John watches the news with a knot of dread in his gut. He understands what all the news shows are saying and he’s scared shitless. But when Sam glances up from his book long enough to catch a glimpse of the newscaster and asks John why the news lady looks so scared, he only shushes the boy. He doesn’t want to scare his sons, not yet, so he just wrangles them up to come help him make supper. Sam doesn’t want spaghetti and so, he’s thankfully distracted and doesn’t ask any more questions. Dean is quiet until they sit down to eat and then he makes a game out of it to try and cheer Sam up. It works a little bit, but John knows they’ll be sneaking around the kitchen later tonight so Dean can give Sam the Fruity Pebbles he really wants. Sam’s giggling always wakes him up. He’ll lie in bed, listening to their whispered voices coming up through the floor vent and smile tiredly, wishing Mary was there to listen as well.

He puts his boys to bed earlier than usual. Dean and Sam both protest it, but a stern look from John quiets Dean. Sam follows suit, but he glares. His youngest son has a temper already, one that John recognizes as being a lot like his own, so he lets him slide on it some. He thinks once the boy becomes a teenager he’s going to regret not taking a firmer stance now. He puts them to bed earlier because he wants to watch the nightly news without them asking questions or becoming afraid. John’s not been able to shake his creeping uneasiness since watching the first report, and if what seems to be happening _is_ happening, then he needs to know all he can. If for no other reason than to keep his children as safe as possible.

The nightly news report is bleaker than the evening news was. John watches the reports on every channel and feels that knot of dread growing larger with every bit of commentary he sees. None of the strains of plague that are presenting are proving responsive to antibiotics. There is, in short, no hope for survival of this thing that carries very little hope with it to begin with. John sits in front of the television with horror like a tumor growing inside of him as each new report adds a layer of terror the one before it didn’t. He learns a lot—more than he ever wanted to know—about the plague.

It’s worse than any scary story he could ever read. It’s _happening_ , right now in 1991 and there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing anyone can do about it. _It’s downright medieval,_ one man from the CDC says in an interview. He’s trying to be humorous, but the grim, drawn look on his face sucks any humor there would’ve been out of it. The plague isn’t exactly good fodder for making jokes.

By dawn, John is exhausted and his eyes feel dry and gritty. He hasn’t looked in a mirror, but he _feels_ pale now that he’s heard all the news he can stomach. He’s made up his mind though: he’s not sending the boys to school, even if they are open today. All along the east coast, school has been cancelled and while the Midwest still appears plague-free, the basic gist of it is that it won’t be for long. He’s not up for risking the lives of his children so they can go learn to read _see Jane run_ or whatever it is they’re being taught. They’re probably too old to read _see Jane run_ , now that he thinks about it. They are too _young_ though to see the news broadcasts. It’s the same story on every channel: As the sun rises around the planet, the world slowly starts to fall to its knees. 

More information is being reported every hour on the hour. John has heard all about how physicians can only quarantine the sick. He’s heard how they can only watch with horrified fascination as, one after another, people die from it. He now knows that septicemic plague victims have roughly 14.5 hours to live once the first symptoms show and in many cases, the time between exhibiting symptoms and death is much quicker. Even if the antibiotics worked, every single one of those people would probably die anyway. _Y. pestis_ is at its most lethal when it chug-a-lugs through the blood and turns the extremities black.

Bubonic victims can linger for upwards of a week, but most only last four days, so the ones with the buboes are still hanging on for now, John reckons. Pneumonic victims are dead within hours in some cases, with 48 hours being about all the time they have left. Reports of doctors intentionally overdosing some patients with morphine have become common in the news reports after only one day. One physician they interviewed called it an act of mercy. The authorities disagreed, so they arrested him for it. He probably won’t make it out of the local jail alive, but then again, neither will many other people, inmates or guards.

John doesn’t know yet what he’s going to do, not exactly, but he’s going to protect Sam and Dean. Even if that means keeping them locked inside the house until the plague burns itself out like it always has. He is prepared to do that just like he is prepared to put a bullet in anyone who dares come coughing around their door. If there are risks to be taken then he’ll be the one taking them. He doesn’t want his kids to have a 14.5 hour life expectancy thanks to this… this _thing_ , this conqueror worm that is eating its way through humanity at an alarming rate already.

When John finally turns the television off at a quarter to seven, he feels sick in a way that has nothing to do with plague—thankfully. He rises from his chair to go rouse the boys and break the news that they won’t be going to school today. Dean will be thrilled, but Sam probably won’t be. He loves school too much to be excited about a surprise day off from learning reading, writing and arithmetic. Dean’s favorite subject at this juncture in his life is pulling pigtails. 

John smiles faintly as he starts upstairs. He has to stop halfway up to shake his head. He’s trying to rattle loose the last word he heard an exhausted official from the CDC mutter from beneath his drooping mustache: _Pandemic_. As John resumes his way upstairs, it dances around in circles through his mind.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The plague is still merrily chewing its way through Hawaii a month later. When vacationing in paradise, the mere _thought_ of a diet flies right out the window. It’s getting plenty of exercise though, running around and around in gleeful circles across pristine white beaches. Gaily, it kicks up sand as one host after another with the mobility to do so stumbles to the ocean, hoping for escape. Seagulls pick hunks of rotting flesh from those lying dead in the surf. Sharks fight over the ones the tide has pulled out. The plague doesn’t mind sharing once it has had its fill. It leaves the birds and fish to do what they will with its leftovers and gallivants from one end of Oahu to the other. The scenery is breathtaking and the weather couldn’t be more perfect.

Inland, after glutting itself on the close-packed bounty of the upper east coast, the plague slows down a bit and peruses the options more. It’s a smorgasbord to choose from, a real delight of a feast and it wants to take its time a little now that its initial hunger has been sated. It was nearly starved though, so its piggishness can undoubtedly be forgiven. Still, it reins itself in and begins to delicately nibble its way cross country after one last binge in Vermont.

Survivors from the east coast are running scared now. They leave states all along the eastern seaboard with their cars packed tight with belongings and loved ones. The interstates back up for miles and traffic can stall out for hours—even a day or two. People get out and mingle, share their worries and fear with each other. Survivors hug and hold hands, say prayers together and smear bacteria all over each others skin. It’s a regular love-in. The plague watches it all and touches as much as it can. It really can’t help itself as it crisscrosses interstates and state lines with all of these poor, scared people. They all think they can get away from the plague if only they go to another state or to Canada. Or out across the ocean, they slide across borders into neighboring countries. _Hallo_ , Liechtenstein! _Saúdos_ , Galicia! And a _wạn thī ‘dī kạb khuṇ_ , too, Thailand! 

It rides shotgun with many of the would-be escapees-slash-refugees. It looks out the windows and enjoys the passing scenery. If it doesn’t manage to hitch a ride to a new location, it’ll likely be waiting when they get there and if not, well, it’ll probably be along soon. The plague is ready to venture out and get back into the swing of things. Travel has always been something it enjoys. It gets to see new places, make new acquaintances and sample the local and regional delicacies of each place. Yes, travel is very exciting indeed and it can’t wait to see what’s next. It burbles away in buboes, full to overflowing with excitement as it spreads its wings. It has been away for far too long.

~*~*~*~*~*~

One month passes and then two and still, the news reports keep coming in. They’re saying now that the plague’s incubation time is swifter than it used to be. Now, a victim may start showing symptoms not 12 hours after being exposed. The minimum is still the same—two days ‘til detonation—but that’s not good because the old minimum is the new _maximum_. It travels quickly and it’s incurable. The one glimmer of hope is that some people—roughly three dozen worldwide—have recovered. That’s only the ones with the first type of plague, bubonic, though. And three dozen _worldwide_ isn’t much of a hopeful glimmer at all. It’s something optimistic in a world where fatalism is the key word lately, John reckons, but it damn sure isn’t much.

The bread basket of America is right in the middle of a pestilence that’s eating its way up and down either coast and that’s the bottom line for John. It’s cutting a swath of death through Europe and Asia. It has touched down in parts of Australia, Hawaii and Alaska and is creeping around eastern Canada like a thief. The plague is ducking through cracks in doors and slipping into basements to kiss the rosy cheeks of sleeping children and adults alike. The worldwide terror and panic is profound and it is leaving John with less and less sleep. He has nightmares about petechiae on the backs of the ill; all of God’s tokens scattered across sick, greyish flesh. Every time one of the boys coughs or sneezes, he jumps. Going out for supplies now is an act of bravery even though the Midwest has barely been touched. So far.

John leaves the television on almost all the time now unless the kids are in the living room. Day and night he has watched national and international correspondents disappear to be replaced by new ones until even those are gone. If they haven’t run away hoping for safety then John has no doubt they’re either sick and dying or are already dead. The news still comes, but it’s all over the wire now and the reporters remaining don’t want to be out on a disease infested location shoot anymore than most people. Doomsday cults and singular fanatics, on the other hand, are having a blast. They’re disgusting and almost as scary as the plague itself. One night a week before, John watched a whole group of them descend on a hospital in London because they _hoped_ to get sick. It was the last video footage from England he has seen.

He’s let down all the blinds and drawn all the curtains. There are boxes of De-Con hidden in every nook and cranny he can find. His paranoia is growing with each passing day as he thinks about how Kansas has lots of grain and rats _love_ grain. It’s not a rational thought, not really. However, once he’s had the thought, he can’t shake it. He can spend hours thinking about the rustling of rats in a wheat field, bloody snouts twitching in the cool night air as the plague crawls all over their insides. So far there have been no reported cases of plague in Kansas or anywhere north of the state, but it has dropped in for a nice visit right next door in Colorado. Soon though, people and rats alike will be crossing into Kansas if they aren’t already and with them, they will bring death.

The boys are going stir crazy being cooped up inside all the time and because of it, they are driving John crazy, too. He’s drinking again and the stress coupled with the liquor is making him snappish. He’s spanked them both more than he has in a long time. Sam quietly sulks and Dean slinks around like a kicked dog after a spanking, but before long, they’re up and at it again. They’re kids and they want to go outside and play. Sam wants to know why he can’t go to school and Dean wants to go out to his tree house and read the comics he has stashed there. John tells them truthfully now that school has been cancelled and when Dean knocks a bowl off the counter and breaks it one afternoon, John uses that as an excuse. He grounds him from going outside because he was careless, he says. He feels like the world’s biggest asshole for it, but he has to do something to keep them in line. Right now, keeping the kids in line ( _inside_ ) is more important than trying to win Father of the Year.

That same evening, he fixes their supper and afterward he lets them watch a video. Since they’re not tired and are bored to tears—almost literally—after the movie, he asks if they want to play a board game. Of course they say yes and John tells them to go pick one. He hears them quietly bickering over it and Dean calls Sam a baby for wanting to play Candy Land. Sam snarls something back and before long, they’re shoving each other lightly. All it takes is a quick, sharp bark of, “Boys!” to call them under again. Grudgingly, they resume picking a game to play. John listens to them with one ear and sips from the flask he’s got tucked between his thigh and the arm of the sofa.

When Dean comes to him with the game they’ve settled on, John almost laughs. It’s Life. Instead, he says, “Good choice, you guys. Go set up the board and I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Sure, Dad,” Dean tells him with a grin. “Come on, Sam,” he calls to his brother. John watches them trot off then pulls out his flask for another swallow. When he’s done, he gets up and goes to the kitchen to partake in the game of irony called Life.

It’s a good game and for a little while, John lets himself relax and simply enjoy being with his children. Playing Life with them makes it easy to forget that out there in the great big world, everything is falling apart and they won’t be exempt. By the time they’re done playing, Sam is yawning and droopy-eyed. Dean is valiantly attempting to look alert, but he’s slumping in his seat more and more. John knows two tired kids when he sees them, so he gets them up from the table and hustles them upstairs to brush their teeth.

“Double time, boys,” he says as he lightly gooses Sam to make him giggle.

“Race ya to the top, Sammy,” Dean says. There’s not much enthusiasm in the suggestion because it’s mangled by a yawn.

Sam just shakes his head and trucks on, only looking around to grin at Dean when he slings an arm over his shoulders.

John watches them go and feels his heart swell with affection even as his gut twists with dread about what the future will probably hold for them. He knows he can’t keep them in the dark forever, there is simply no way. After a point, protecting them from the reality that’s coming to pass in the world may end up doing more harm than good. They saw the first newscasts and John figures they’ve maybe gleaned a snatch or two of other reports. So far it hasn’t been enough for them to start asking questions though. Although they have started to look at him a little sideways lately, the past couple of weeks in particular. They may not know exactly what’s going on, but all they have to do is take a look at their dad to know something’s not right. It’s making them uneasy and eventually, they’re going to ask questions. Or get rebellious and sneak outside without John there to watch over them.

John still doesn’t know what to do other than everything in his power he can to protect Sam and Dean. If that means sitting them down and telling them what’s happening out there then that’s what he’ll do. That’s the tricky part though; the question with the most elusive answer. Maybe it’s such a hard question to answer because there is no answer. It still doesn’t stop him from trying to solve the _Why is a raven like a writing desk?_ quandary he’s found himself in.

He puts them both to bed and then goes back downstairs to the television and his flask. Morbid curiosity has John itching to see what else has gone to hell in the few hours he hasn’t been watching. The certainty that it’s _only_ going to be bad news on his screen has him taking a drink to fortify himself before flipping the set on.

The local station is halfway through a report about more riots in Los Angeles and new ones in San Diego and up in Seattle. They show clips of angry mobs looting, pillaging and generally running amok. There’s been a riot at least every other day in major cities all over the world, so that’s no surprise. The diminished size of the crowds in all three cities isn’t necessarily a surprise either, but it’s still stunning. The first riot in Los Angeles had about four times as many participants.

Watching the footage, John sees a man stop in the process of throwing a trashcan through a shop window. He doubles over coughing and the can clatters to the sidewalk. Leaning forward in his seat, John watches as blood sprays in a thick mist from his mouth and he goes to his knees. The corner of his mouth turns down in a disgusted frown as he watches, unable to look away. The cameraman doesn’t flinch from the sight and the newscaster’s voice says the obvious: the man on the sidewalk is sick and it “looks to be” pneumonic plague, which is characterized by a hacking, bloody cough.

It’s only a moment before other rioters notice the sick man and turn away from their mindless destruction to close in on him. They gather around him like a pack of hyenas, makeshift weapons raised above their heads and fear in their eyes. As they begin to beat the man to death right there on a public sidewalk, the scene cuts off and goes back to the anchorwoman in the studio.

 _Another disturbing scene tonight in Los Angeles,_ the anchor says. 

She says more after that, but John doesn’t listen to a word of it. He can only stare at her pretty, drawn face and note that her eyes aren’t the least bit sorry. He thinks maybe she’s glad they killed the man. She probably thinks that by killing him, they stopped one more person out there from spreading the disease. That’s not thinking with her head on straight at all. He can, in a way, understand her logic—her so-called reasoning—but it’s appalling to think that she’s at least temporarily forgotten the number one most important thing about pneumonic plague: It is spread by coughing, by spraying infected sputum into the air. There were hundreds of people out there and at least fifty that closed in on him to beat him to death. That one sick man just killed a whole street full of people, give or take maybe a handful.

Wiping a hand over his mouth, John closes his eyes and tries to give himself one moment’s calm respite from all the worry and death that’s tromping through his mind. When he opens his eyes again, it’s to footage from last week of Manhattan while the reporter talks in the background about cleanup efforts supposedly beginning tomorrow. All the dead lying in the streets look like fallen dominoes. There is a cat sitting on the back of a dead woman, delicately mincing away at her flesh through a hole it has chewed in her shirt. In another shot, it’s a similar situation, but it’s of a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig noshing on the face of what was probably its owner.

Amongst all of that is one lone survivor, a half-naked woman walking down the middle of a street. She stumbles blindly over a body and ping-pongs into one stalled car then another. Her left arm is raised as though she is perpetually in the act of propping on something. Beneath it, even from that distance, the egg-shaped swelling in her armpit is visible as a jutting deformity; the thing that is wrong with this picture.

“Jesus save us,” John mutters as he fumbles out his flask again. He’s seen some hellaciously disturbing and graphic footage, but the shots of Manhattan are definitely the top of the heap.

He’s drinking when he hears, “Dad, why are all those people laying in the street?”

John jerks his head around to find Dean standing in the living room doorway. “What are you doing up?” he asks him.

“I’s thirsty, that’s all,” Dean says. 

He blinks his big green eyes, wondering if he’s done something wrong. Dad’s never said anything before about them getting up for water because, well, it’s _just water_. Dean looks away from his father’s scowling face and back at the television, to the woman stumbling around all the people lying down. He wonders if it’s some kind of movie. 

Rubbing at his eyes, Dean asks John, “Are you watching a zombie movie?”

“No,” John says. He stands up and blocks Dean’s view of the television. “Go back to bed, Dean. I’ll bring you some water.”

“I can get it, it’s not a—” Dean starts.

“Do as I say,” John snaps at him, voice low and commanding.

“Yes, sir,” Dean says as he takes an unconscious step backwards. 

He eyes John worriedly before turning to go back to his room with his head tilted in confusion. There’s a little prickle of fear at the base of his spine, too and he doesn’t know if it has to do with his dad or with the stuff that was on the TV. Dean thinks it was the local news maybe, but he can’t be sure, so he decides not to think that.

Dad’s been weird lately though, _really weird_ and he’s starting to worry Dean a _lot_. Sam’s getting scared a little bit, too and Dean doesn’t like that. When Sam gets scared, a lot of the time he gets mad because of it and then he smarts off. Which gets him spanked and then he cries or gets even madder or sometimes he does both. Dean doesn’t like that either. He hates seeing his little brother unhappy, so he’s started putting himself between Sam and their dad a lot lately without even realizing it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

John gets Dean his water and is taking it to him when a report off the wire concerning a hospital fire in Avignon, France is rattled off by the anchorwoman. No one knows if it was due to a riot there or from a malfunctioning incinerator in the hospital’s basement. In a village outside of Glasgow there is a report just coming in about a mass suicide in the town hall. He scrubs a hand over his face, shakes his head and pulls himself away from the carnival of horrors playing out on the 24 hour newsfeed behind him.

After giving Dean his water, John peeks in on Sam through the crack in his bedroom door. The tell-tale glow of a flashlight from under the blankets tells John that his youngest is reading instead of sleeping. John backs away and leaves Sam to it. For a moment, he stands in the middle of the hallway and listens to the small, reassuring sounds of his children in their rooms on either side of him. Across the hall, he hears the light thunk of Dean putting his water glass on the nightstand. From Sam’s room comes the telling whisper of a page turning. One of them sighs and there is the squeak of bedsprings as Dean rolls over.

John feels like a giant hand is pushing down on his shoulders and he sags under the pressure. Unwanted, he imagines Sam coughing blood in the middle of a riot he’s gotten caught in and can’t find a way out of. He sees an angry mob closing in on him with baseball bats and lengths of two-by-four, ready to beat his head in for being sick. He sees Dean stumbling down a street lined with the dead, his arm cocked at a strange angle, like he’s looking for something to prop on. A scream threatens to go climbing up out of his throat and his eyes prick with unwanted tears. With a deep, shaking breath, John composes himself and moves away from his little sentry post outside the bedrooms of his sons to go back downstairs. He’s got some serious thinking to do.

The plague is right across the state line, he reminds himself and soon, it’ll be paying a visit to Kansas. It’s probably already there, if he’s being honest about it, sniffing around in fields, looking for a speck of grain or a dropped crumb from a farmer’s lunch. It’s going to come to Lawrence, sooner rather than later and John has known it all along. John decides then and there that they won’t be there to greet it when it does. There’s not so much as a murmur about it from farther up north so far, not in Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming or the Dakotas. John’s only interested in South Dakota right now though. He knows a guy up there, a friend and he hopes like hell he’s not about to waste a phone call. They won’t be able to hide even there, but it’s a little farther away and will hopefully buy them more time.

John picks up the receiver to the phone beside the sofa and dials the number he keeps on a scrap of paper that does double duty as his address book. It’s late, but Bobby has always kept odd hours and John has no doubt he’s glued to his own television.

“What?” is the greeting John receives after the fourth ring.

“Hey, Bobby, how’re you doing?” John asks.

“Well, I ain’t dyin’ of the plague if that’s what you’re askin’,” Bobby replies. “You and the boys okay?”

“Yeah… Yeah, we are for now,” John tells him. “Glad to hear you’re all right, too.” He hesitates for a second then sucks it up and says, “Look, I was wondering if—”

Bobby snorts softly in his ear. “Pack up and come on, you don’t need to ask.” It’s his turn to hesitate then, but like John, he soldiers on. “If you get sick on the way though… I’m sorry to say it, but—”

“I understand, Bobby,” John says. He does understand, too. Any other time that would have been a powerfully shitty thing for someone to say, but when a person mentions being _sick_ , they’re not talking about a cough due to cold anymore. Staying away from the sick is about a lot more than avoiding a few days of discomfort now. “Same goes for you though. If you get sick while we’re on our way…”

“I swear I’ll be polite and go die somewhere nice and quiet. Out of the way, you know,” Bobby says, voice dry as dust.

“Not what I meant,” John says. “Try to leave us a sign or something if you’re able. That’s all I ask.

“Well, no shit that ain’t what you meant. I know what you meant,” Bobby says.

It’s only then that John realizes he was making a joke. It’s been weeks since much of anything amused John Winchester, save the boys squabbling sometimes. More and more often though even that’s only grating on his tightly wound nerves.

“Sorry, Bobby,” John says. “I’m about out of my mind here and I’m exhausted to boot.”

“I know,” Bobby says, dismissing John’s snappishness. He shrugs and glances over at his own television set. He’s got the sound turned all the way down, but all the pictures are worth more than anything he’d be likely to hear. He’s waiting for the day he turns on the TV and finds nothing but snow to keep him company. “I’ll leave ya some kinda something in way of a warning. I don’t know what it’ll be, but I guarantee you won’t be likely to miss it.”

“All right then,” John says. “We’ll see you in a few days.”

“When’re you headin’ out?” Bobby asks.

“As soon as I can get the boys packed and ready,” John says.

Bobby whistles low, but doesn’t argue with him about it. “Just be careful. It’s late, you’re tired and there’s crazies all over the damned place.”

“I’ve got a gun,” John tells him. His voice is drop-dead matter of fact when he says it. There’s no mistaking what he means.

“Good to hear it,” Bobby says. 

South Dakota is quiet as can be on the plague front for now, but he’s taken to carrying a shotgun around with him all over the house and he’s got a nine millimeter tucked in the back of his pants as an extra safety measure. The bullets aren’t just meant for any loonies that may happen on his place either. They’re for squirrels or mice or rats or rabbits or damn well anything that looks like it may be feeling a bit under the weather. There’s one he’s saving special for himself, too, should he get to coughing up blood or wake up with a tingling in his fingers or an egg shaped lump in his groin. 

John’s still on the line and Bobby blinks himself out of his thoughts enough to say, “Drive safe,” before dropping the phone back in its cradle.

John hangs up after Bobby then gets up to go drag Sam and Dean out of bed to pack. He doesn’t think they’ll argue much, they’re tired of being cooped up in the house and although they’ve only met Bobby a few times, they like him a lot.

Sam’s still awake and reading under his covers when John goes to his room. He looks shamefaced, but defiant when he comes out. He thinks he’s in big trouble for not going to bed like he was supposed to. He tried and he was even tired, but he couldn’t sleep, so he decided to read. Sam’s surprised when John just goes to his closet and gets the duffel bag he used for camp the one time he went.

“Pack as many clothes as you can fit in this bag and use your backpack to bring anything else you _really_ want to keep,” John tells him as he places it on the foot of his bed. “We’re going to stay with your Uncle Bobby for a little while.”

“Why?” Sam asks.

“Because we are,” John says.

“That’s not an answer,” Sam says with a frown. “ _Why?_ ”

“ _Because we are,_ ” John says right back. He’s already almost out of patience with Sam. They don’t have time for this. “Pack your stuff, Sammy and stop pestering me. I said we’re going and that’s it.”

“It’s ‘cause of the news, huh?” Sam asks him.

“What? How do you know about that?” John asks.

“I sat on the stairs night ‘fore last and listened,” Sam says. “It was scary though, so I didn’t sit for long. But that’s it, huh?”

“Pack your stuff, Sam,” John tells him again. Sam’s already started figuring it out and yet, here he is, still trying to hide the ugliness and fear of the situation from him.

Sam frowns again, but this time he nods. “Okay, Dad,” he says. He climbs out of bed to take the bag and goes to his dresser to start getting his clothes.

John watches him for a minute before leaving the room to get Dean. He doesn’t have to go far, Dean’s right outside Sam’s door. He must’ve heard them talking and got up. “Why are you standing there, Dean? If you’re awake enough to eavesdrop then you know you ought to be packing your stuff.”

Dean blinks at him then peers around him into the bedroom to check on Sam before he nods. “Yes, sir,” he says before turning around to go back in his room. 

Sam didn’t tell him about sitting on the stairs and listening to the news. Dean wonders if Sam thought he’d rat on him or something. Dean’s no rat. He gets his own once-used camp duffel out of his closet and thinks Sam’s a total goober if that’s what he thought.

Once he’s satisfied they’re doing what he’s told them to, John goes to pack his own belongings. Looking around his bedroom, John sighs and says a silent goodbye to all the memories that live in here. It’s been a lonely room for a long time now and saying goodbye to it isn’t as hard as he would’ve thought. Without Mary to lie beside him anymore, it’s not really a room that has any meaning or use other than as a place to sleep.

John packs quickly and quietly, all of his military efficiency coming back to him as he goes. He manages to cram a lot of stuff in his old duffel bag and while it’s heavy, he doesn’t mind. He’s got all he needs, he thinks, but then he looks up at the wall and sees the photographs in a collage frame hanging to the left of the dresser. There’s twelve pictures, each one a little scene from their life together. Their wedding picture is dead center and all around it are pictures of the boys. There’s one of Mary holding Dean as a baby right outside the hospital the day they brought him home. She looks tired, but happy in it and there’s a similar one of her with Sam on the other side of it. There’s a picture of John with Dean in his t-ball uniform and of him napping on the couch after work with Sam asleep on his chest.

John takes the frame down from the wall and swallows around the lump in his throat. There is a reason he doesn’t look at these pictures anymore and hasn’t since the night he found Mary dead in the rocking chair in Sam’s nursery. She had looked so peaceful in the moonlight streaming through the blinds that for a split second, John had thought she was asleep. He’d known better though, deep down. As Sam had started to cry, a thin, distressed wail, John had thought that the cancer that’d been eating away at her for the last two months had finally run its course.

The doctors had given her a fairly good prognosis of a year left, but when it came to cancer, doctors weren’t ever totally sure. Except they’d known it would ultimately be the death of her and treatments would only prolong the inevitable. So, Mary had decided against treatment. _If I’m going to die anyway, John, why would I want to be miserable during the time I have left?_ That’s what she had asked him the day she told him she wasn’t going to do chemo. He’d exploded, but her calm steadiness had eased him a little. It wasn’t long though that he’d found himself standing in the doorway of Sam’s nursery—now his bedroom—looking at her and thinking, _We were supposed to have a year_. 

Dean, attached to his brother from the day they brought him home, had come out of his room at the sound of Sam’s crying. John had hidden his heartbroken grief long enough to go into the room and get the baby. He’d handed him to Dean and told him to take his brother downstairs and wait. Then he’d sat down on the floor beside the rocking chair and held Mary’s cold hand as he cried like a whipped baby himself.

It wasn’t until later, after the cloud of grief in his mind had cleared enough for him to really _see_ , that John realized it hadn’t been the cancer that had killed his wife. It had been her doing, by her own hand because she hadn’t wanted to be a burden. She’d left her own version of a suicide note that doubled as a will all over the house—little notes dictating who got what and short messages to the recipients taped to the bottoms of the objects. That night when she was done, she’d gone into Sam’s room to tell her baby boy goodbye. Realizing that had broken John’s heart all over again.

Every single one of the pictures he carefully takes from the frame is a reminder of that loss for him. Each one a moment that is gone forever and with Mary dead, there’s no one there to remember them with him. He can’t leave them behind though because they _are_ reminders, pieces of the good times, even if they are touched with sadness. John takes each photograph from the frame and packs them with his other things. He pauses to touch Mary’s tired, smiling face and her bright, young, hopeful face in turn. It was a life cut short, but John likes to think he gave her a happy one, at least most of the time.

When he’s finally done packing his things, he sits on the side of the bed and listens to the boys while he makes a mental list of other things they need to bring along. Down the hall, Sam calls for Dean to come get him something off the shelf beside his closet because he can’t reach. John smiles to himself and wonders if the boy is ever going to grow much. He’s mighty little for his age and it gets him teased at school. Well, he figures, even if Sam ends up topping out at no more than 5’5”, he won’t have to worry about being bullied for it anymore. He’s got to find the bright side somewhere in this mess.

He groans though when he catches an argument already in progress. He tuned out a bit and missed what started it, but he hears Dean say, “Least I don’t pick my nose while I do my homework.”

“That’s ‘cause you don’t do your homework,” Sam argues back. He’s working himself up to outright yelling. All John can think is, _fun_ , when he considers he’s going to be cooped up in the car with them for days on their way to Bobby’s. “‘Sides, you eat your scabs!” Ah, there’s the yelling. John knew it was coming.

“Do so do my homework! I just do it so fast you don’t never see me. And I don’t eat my scabs, you booger eater!” Dean yells back. “Take it back!”

“You do so eat your scabs, I saw you!” Sam cries. “You’re gross, Dean and I won’t take it back. No!”

John rolls his eyes and thinks that if Dean does eat his scabs, that really is pretty gross. Then again, he can’t say much, he did it when he was a kid, too. 

He gets up from the bed and goes to call them under anyway because they need to be packing, not fighting. “Both of you stop it right now,” John says when he comes into the room. Sam looks mad enough to pop Dean one and Dean’s about as puffed up as his brother. The last damned thing John needs is for them to actually tie up and fight. It’s rare for them to take it that far, but it does happen and right now they’re tired, confused and stressed, which has made them tetchy.

“But, Dad, Dean’s being a jerk!” Sam tells him. He’s mad enough to spit nails and all over a little remark about nose picking.

“Nuh-uh, _Sam’s_ being a jerk!” Dean says. “He started it, too!”

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“ _Boys_ , that is _enough_!” John yells over the both of them. “I don’t care who started it, but it stops _right now_. Do you understand me?”

They look ready to argue with him about it, both convinced in their own stubborn way that the other is to blame and a great wrong has been done here. They nod though, and Sam stomps off to go get a stack of books off the floor by his bed.

“Yes, sir,” he mumbles as he yanks open the zipper on his backpack to start cramming his books inside.

“Dean?” John asks.

“Yes, sir,” Dean says.

“Good, now go back to your room and finish packing,” John says. “Sam, if you need anything else, come get me and leave your brother alone. Same for you, Dean.”

“ _I_ can reach the top shelf,” Dean says sulkily. “I don’t need that big baby’s help.”

“I meant for you to just leave Sam alone for right now,” John says. “Now stop sulking and go do what I told you to.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean says again. He turns to scuff out of the room, still mad about whatever they started out arguing over. He’s likely to be fine in a few minutes though. Sam’s the one that holds grudges.

“That’s better,” John says as he follows Dean out. He stops in the hallway and looks between the two open doors. “I don’t want to hear another word about nose picking or scab eating either, got that?”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“What’s that?” John asks him.

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Sam says, correcting himself with an unhappy slump to his shoulders.

Dean smirks, feeling triumphant on that front. John lets him have it and just walks away. He needs to go down to the kitchen and pack up some food supplies. Then he thinks he needs to put together a first aid kit for them as well.

“Don’t forget to pack your toothbrushes,” he reminds them as he walks away.

Neither one says anything, but he knows they heard him and that’ll do for now. John decides if they’re not done packing by the time he has the food and first aid kit ready to load up then they’re going to be done anyway. Time’s wasting and they need to hit the road.

It’s after two in the morning by the time they get everything in the car and leave their house, their lives, behind. The boys are too exhausted to argue with each other about anything and fall asleep halfway across town, both of them slumped down under the quilt John gave them to cover up with. He’s got the heater on in the Impala to chase away the night chill and it makes him drowsy, too. He’s got a thermos full of coffee though and he refilled his flask before putting the other four bottles in the trunk, so he thinks he’s set for a while, at least until he’s over the state line into Nebraska.

He checks the rearview mirror and sees his sons huddled together, snuggling under the quilt to fight the chill of the leather seats. With grim determination, he turns his eyes back to the empty road stretching out in front of him and presses down on the gas. The sooner they’re out of Kansas, the better John will feel because to his mind, that means his boys will be, if not _safe_ , then at least _safer_. He’s borrowing time and he knows it, but it’s enough—barely—for now.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Just before sunrise the next morning, John crosses the line into Nebraska and breathes a sigh of relief. Back behind him and to the west, a station wagon crosses the line from Colorado into Kansas. It is carrying a family of four. The woman, Maeve, drives while her two children sleep in the backseat. Beside her, her husband, Nathan, is very still now and she knows what that means. His head is cocked at an unnatural angle and from the corner of her eye, she can see the huge lump on the side of his neck. It pokes up like the head of a vestigial twin and it makes her stomach, swollen with their third child, lurch. Soon, she will need to pull over and remove her husband’s dead body from the car, but she can’t bring herself to do it just yet. Maeve is quietly mourning his silent passing when her youngest begins to cough from the seat behind her.

“No, oh, no,” Maeve mutters under her breath, her voice thick with tears. “No, no, no!” she chokes out as she hits the steering wheel with both hands. She yanks the wheel and pulls over to the shoulder to look in the backseat. She can’t hold back her sob when she meets her little girl’s glassy eyes and sees the blood spattered all over her sweet face.

Rebekah starts to cry then and says, “Mommy,” around a mouthful of blood. It slides down her chin in a thick, glossy stream as she reaches for Maeve’s hand.

Maeve reaches behind her seat to take her daughter’s sweaty, feverish hand and sobs again. “No,” Maeve moans as she slumps in the seat, too weak with grief to move. She hoped they would be safe, that Nathan would recover and that no one would start to _cough_. It’s over now though. They’re all dead because Rebekah’s tiny lungs are full of sickness. It’s in the car with them now, big as life and small as a speck of dust.

Not knowing what else to do, Maeve pulls back onto the highway and listens to her daughter cough while her husband’s dead body sways beside her in the passenger seat. In the storage area behind the backseat, the family’s beloved guinea pig, Cola, lies dead in his cage. His mouth is ringed with drying, bloody foam.

Just outside of Dodge City, Maeve will begin to feel a tingling in her fingertips. With a tearing cry in her throat, she will press down on the accelerator and aim the station wagon at the rail of the bridge they’re approaching. Her son, Nathan Jr., will sleep through it all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

While John Winchester makes his way across Nebraska, stopping only to fill up and buy gas station hot dogs for him and the boys, the plague begins to slowly lay siege to their home state. Soon after Maeve drives herself and her family off a bridge, the plague finds new passage in the body of a hobo named Dewitt that tries to save the family. It’s too late, Maeve isn’t even completely in the car anymore—a smart woman, she remembered to unfasten her safety belt before ramming the bridge. She rolled down the windows, too. Little Rebekah is still alive enough to cough all over the nice man once though before her little body gives out with a pained, sad shudder. The fleas that formerly hosted on Cola’s body are bouncing all over the place. Hyperactive children the world over could take their cues from them: this is how it’s really done.

Dewitt leaves the tragic scene shaken, afraid and working alive with the plague two different ways. He goes back to the little hobo town he’s calling home until the next train runs and shares his awful story with his fellow hobos. There, the plague flies through the air with the greatest of ease, a disgusting little acrobat with an impishly demonic sense of mischief. It lovingly caresses the hand-painted sign that welcomes it to Silver Belle, the name given this place by the hobos who use it as a way-station and makes itself comfortable. It’s a lovely name for an impoverished shit hole that reeks of cheap liquor, human waste and desperation. The plague feels right at home, taking up company with the rats and humans alike. It even makes the acquaintance of a few squirrels, who then share its company with their fellow arboreal rodents.

Its visit is an unfortunately short one though and in less than a week’s time, it has chewed its way through the human population of Silver Belle. It is, however, spreading like a hot new trend among the rodent populations. Most of Silver Belle’s inhabitants lay dead on their pallets, covered in blood that has leaked from their noses, mouths and anuses. Their limbs are black as tar and stiff as iron wood where they haven’t rotted. One woman lays with blood caked so thickly around her mouth it looks like dirty cherry pie filling.

The kind scientists who reawakened the plague made it special in many ways; namely in that it’s more common bubonic form has become its most rare. How charming, the plague thinks as it flits from human, to flea, to human body lice thanks to the toxicity it creates when septicemic, then back again. It’s a charming little ping-pong match amongst vectors and the plague is having an absolute ball.

One poor soul by the name of Catfish LaCroix makes it out of Silver Belle. He heads for the nearby rail yard and finds an unlocked freight container hauling dry grains. He has a cousin that works in the yard and can always count on him to take care of him and his friends—when his friends were still alive.

Catfish hauls out of there, scared shitless, but confident he’s safe for now; he beat it. He doesn’t say a word to anyone about what happened back in Silver Belle. The lice living in his hair and his beard know all about it though. The plague rides the rails with a sense of wonder. Travel by train is yet another marvel of 20th century transportation. Never before has it had so much fun and ease of travel. Planes, train and automobiles shuttle it from one place to another almost as quick as a blink. It settles into the freight car and enjoys this ride as well. It sure does beat the old ways of getting around by horse and cart or by foot.

Eventually, too many people will be sick to ferry it to and fro like this. Or the scared humans will _get a clue_ and ground flights, put a halt to trains and buses, they will try to block off roadways. For now though, the scared humans are _too_ scared and every emergency plan they’ve ever had lies forgotten in dusty folders while they all scramble and climb over one another seeking a plague-free safe zone. The plague whistles merrily and wishes them luck with a glug and burble of ooze-filled buboes.

When the train makes its last stop outside of Topeka, the people who open the compartment door will learn about their new visitor. The plague will greet them with the stench of rotting flesh and the hungry, hungry fleas it lives in now. Dead eyes will watch as it hops from the floor of the car to the flesh of the men who’ve discovered it. The plague is so glad to be getting out of the freight car. It sure does hate being cooped up.

People from Dodge City to Wichita and on along the railroad line everywhere in between are coughing up blood or watching their fingers and toes turn black by the time John is halfway across Nebraska.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, the plague is making like a bacterial Godzilla and laying waste to Tokyo. It has the collective memory of billions of souls inside of its small cell walls and everyday, it adds something new. Birthdays and anniversaries, births and deaths, happiness and heartbreak, art and pop culture; it all becomes a part of the plague. It is the tiny, voiceless historian for the ages. If humanity knew half of what it knows, it would fall to its knees before the plague in awe as well as in fear.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Somewhere on the other side of Omaha, John at last tries to tell Sam and Dean the truth of what’s going on. He’s careful with his wording, trying not to send the boys into hysterics, but he doesn’t think he’s done a very good job. They listen with an eerie, uncustomary silence, their eyes big and mouths pursed with worry and a little confusion.

After another stop to refuel just before he hits South Dakota, Sam finally breaks the silence after John’s gotten back in the car and handed out snacks. It starts as a whisper, “You ask ‘im, Dean.”

“Nope. You wanted to know, so _you_ ask ‘im,” is Dean’s reply.

John listens to this back and forth for about six miles before he can’t take it anymore. They’ve also graduated to lightly jostling one another, which is always a precursor to escalation. So, with that in mind, he says, “Somebody damn well better ask me whatever it is or you two can find something else to talk about. Shit or get off the pot, boys.”

Sam huffs and screws his eyes closed for a second. Then he pops them open again with another huff and meets John’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Dad, are we going to get sick and die, too?”

His mouth is stained bright red from the cherry Ring Pop John bought him at the gas station and it’s not a sight he likes to see at all. _It’s just candy,_ John reminds himself. His traitorous imagination tries to make it something else though and mostly it succeeds.

“Not if I can help it,” John says. He tries on a smile for his two scared sons. “I swear to you both right now that I won’t let anything bad happen to you so long as it’s in my power to stop it.”

Dean nods almost immediately and smiles at him. He has nacho cheese Doritos stuck in his teeth, but it’s the greatest damned smile John has ever seen. Sam takes a minute longer, but finally nods, too. John’s no fool though, Sam doesn’t look nearly as sure as Dean does. He can only sigh and let it go. Sam’s always been the least trusting of the two, more into cold, hard facts than he is something like a person’s _word_. Sam would’ve probably grown up to be a scientist or a lawyer, but now college is out of the question and John has no idea what either one of his boys will grow up to be. But he’ll be damned if they won’t get the chance _to_ grow up. That has become something like a prayer with him since Valentine’s Day.

“Told ya he wouldn’t let us get sick, didn’t I?” Dean whispers to Sam a mile or so later.

“Yeah,” Sam says back.

John glances at them in the rearview mirror again and sees that Dean is holding Sam’s hand. They’re both watching John like he alone can make this all go away and make them safe again. He hates to break it to them—so he won’t—but there isn’t a damned thing he can do other than what he’s already doing. It’s not enough, it never will be enough, but for now… _For now_ …

That becomes the mantra to go with his prayer as he at long last turns onto the road that will take them to Bobby’s.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby welcomes them into his home after a quick once-over to make sure no one’s feverish or looks to _become_ feverish. A man of letters as much as car parts, Bobby has been doing his research since the first news report broke. He’s got books stacked up all over the place now and his mind is awash with stories of the plague from centuries past. This here, this is the plague of yore, but it’s so much worse than it ever was, even during The Great Mortality. Hell, this that’s currently going on makes the other look like a day at the park. Which, bluntly put, makes it nightmare fodder straight from the deepest pits of hell.

He met John Winchester and his boys four years ago and they took to each other like a couple of long lost pals. They’d met by way of a trade magazine—John was advertising from Kansas all the way up to North Dakota and Montana for a ’67 Impala bumper. Seems he had bent his all to hell one night while backing out of a bar parking lot. Bobby hadn’t known it then and wouldn’t for another two years after meeting him, but John had kissed the front end of the GMC while his two kids waited for him at home alone.

He’d later tell Bobby about coming in to find Dean standing on a stepstool to wash the supper dishes. Sam had been asleep on the couch, covered up with the quilt they kept draped across the back of it. “It was the saddest damn thing I’ve ever seen, Bobby,” John had told him with a deep frown as he’d poured another drink. “There I was with blood all over my face from kissing the steering wheel and there was Dean, washing dishes and apologizing for not waiting. He said Sam was hungry and they couldn’t wait anymore. I felt like such a shit.”

“And yet, here ya are in my kitchen gettin’ drunk,” Bobby had pointed out. “When’s the last time you were _sober_ , John?”

That had sparked one hell of an argument right then and there and the next morning John had been gone with the boys. Bobby hadn’t heard a word from him since, but the kids sent him Christmas cards each year after that. He took that as some kind of good sign. All wasn’t well on the friendship front, but John didn’t hate his guts either, he reckoned, since he let his kids send him cards. Then a few days ago, John rang him up and Bobby thinks things are about square between them now. He still doesn’t fail to notice the smell of liquor on John’s breath. But hell, he ain’t gonna say anything. He’s about two and half sheets, headed for three, himself. It’s late and he ain’t got a goddamned thing to stay sober for, not lately especially.

He’s had their rooms ready since he got off the phone with John the other night and doesn’t waste any time showing them upstairs to their quarters. Sam falls right into bed with a huge yawn and after a couple of minutes spent bouncing on his—the squeaky springs are funny to him—Dean quiets down for bed, too. Satisfied they’re all tucked in and safe, John goes back downstairs with Bobby to the kitchen where they have a few more drinks.

John’s pouring his fifth or sixth drink since arriving when he stops and says, “I did quit you know.”

Bobby is reclining in a chair at the table, fingers idly tapping at a 17th century sketch of a plague doctor, but stops when John speaks. “Oh yeah?” he asks, eyebrows raised beneath the bill of his cap.

“ _Yeah_ ,” John says a bit snappishly. He never has been a patient man, not even close, though God help him he does try. “Right after we left here that last time. What you said… about when I was last sober… that struck a hell of a nerve. Pissed me off fine and good, too, but it made me think. So, I quit. Except…”

He trails off and gestures at his whiskey glass before turning it up to gulp down half of it in one go. Bobby watches him drink and picks up his own glass to sip his whiskey.

“Fallin’ off the wagon’s a bitch,” Bobby says. “I wasn’t judgin’ you though, I ain’t nobody _to_ judge. If I did judge you for anything, it wasn’t for the drinkin’, John, it was for leavin’ your kids alone like that.”

John snuffs softly and looks down at his hands folded on the tabletop in front of him. “Do you know that sometimes I could barely look at them? Especially Sam. I found Mary in his room and I… I don’t know. I had to get away from them because every time I looked at them… Bobby. Fuck. I’m a sonofabitch.”

“Naw, you ain’t,” Bobby says. Then he stops. “Well, I reckon you are a little bit, but you got your shit together.”

“And then lost it again about a week after the news reports started coming in,” John says with a grimace.

John raises his glass in a silent, mocking toast and then drains it. He busies himself pouring another and Bobby doesn’t say anything. Truth is, no, he doesn’t think John Winchester is the best daddy in the world, especially not back in the days when he was leaving two really young kids at home alone. John _tries_ though. He picked himself up by his bootstraps and put his big boy pants on and he’s giving it all he’s got now. He may’ve fallen off the wagon, but he’s still looking after his sons the best he can in a world that’s going to hell without even the courtesy of a hand basket.

Bobby rises after another couple of minutes to get some ice for his whiskey, and when he walks by, he claps John on the shoulder. “Fall off the wagon, you did, but you’ve still got most of your shit together. That’s more than I can say for most folks.”

“Thanks,” John says with a soft laugh.

They drink in silence after that, listening to the wind curl around the eaves of the house in low, moaning whispers. About an hour into it, a scream from upstairs cuts through the quiet and scares both of them half to death. They’re up from their chairs and running before their hearts even slow down from the initial startlement.

John checks Dean’s room first and finds his bed empty, but a check of Sam’s room shows him both of the boys. Dean’s up in the bed with Sam, stroking his sweaty hair and rocking him gently. His eyes are big and scared in his pale face, the ginger dust of his freckles standing out brightly against the pallor. When he sees John, he thinks Dean gets even paler.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Dean says. John doesn’t know if the boy realizes it, but he’s working himself around so as to put himself between Sam and John and Bobby. “Sammy had a nightmare, _that’s all_. He’s not sick, I swear it.”

John slumps in the doorway and looks at the two of them, thinking how Dean’s always been nuts about his little brother, but after Mary died, he took on the role of mama bear as well as big brother. It’d do his heart good to see it if it sometimes didn’t break it just as bad. Part of the reason Dean’s so fiercely protective and hell bent on taking care of Sam is _because_ of John. Because he wasn’t there to do it himself a lot of the time when it counted in the earlier years. Now Dean’s taken on the role and is reluctant to give it up—hell, he practically refuses without saying as much.

“You all right, Sammy?” John asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says. His voice sounds small. “I’m sorry. I dreamed… there were _rats everywhere_. Their mouths were all bloody like I heard on the news that night. They were making me sick over and over again.”

“Shit,” John says. He scrubs at his face then glances at Bobby.

Bobby looks back and shrugs. He doesn’t know what the hell to do either, he’s just damn sorry it’s happened. Being sorry can’t cure nightmares though, so he keeps quiet.

“Is there anything I can do?” John asks. He feels like a gawking jackass just standing there.

“No,” Dean answers for them both. He realizes how that sounds and smiles reassuringly at John and Bobby. “I know what to do, that’s all.” To Sam he says, “Where’s your book bag, Sam?”

“In the closet,” Sam snuffles out. He finally pulls away from Dean and swipes at his sweaty, tear-streaked face. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he says again as he looks down at his lap.

“It’s okay, son,” John tells him. He’s had plenty of nightmares in his day. Shit about Vietnam used to take up most of his sleeping hours, but nowadays the plague has a front row seat in his dream theater. “I understand. Nightmares are scary things and they’re nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Okay,” Sam says. He doesn’t sound too sure of it. He thinks he’s too old to be having titty baby bad dreams, after all.

“Here, pick a book,” Dean says as he drops the book bag on the side of the bed.

“Okay,” Sam says. He sounds a little perkier about it.

John jerks his head slightly to the side, signaling for Bobby to come on. “You boys holler if you need us, we’ll be right downstairs.”

“Yes, sir,” they answer in unison. Dean grins at him again, an oddly reassuring gesture for a twelve year old boy. Sam is distracted with rummaging through his collection of books, but given the dream he just had, John thinks that’s actually a good thing.

~*~*~*~*~*~

John goes back downstairs with Bobby, but not for long. He excuses himself, takes his bottle and tells Bobby goodnight. He’s tired from being on the road all day, but he doesn’t feel like sleeping yet either. However, he’s thinking about the kids upstairs, about Dean sitting up in bed and reading to Sam. Sam who is well above the reading level of kids his own age, but still likes for his brother to read to him after a nightmare. Until tonight, John had no idea about that, not even a little one. He’s listened to them foraging around in the kitchen after bedtime more nights than he can count, but he was in the dark about this secret ritual. He can picture Sam tiptoeing across the hallway on stocking feet or Dean, who has slept with half an ear open for Sam since Mary died, rising to the sound of his brother thrashing and whimpering in fear.

It’s a hell of a note to realize your twelve year old son is a better parent than you are. John is at once proud of Dean and terribly ashamed of himself for all the years he spent at the bottom of a bottle, missing out on the important little things. It’s no wonder he’s not as close to Sam, that Sam won’t _let_ him get as close to him as he has Dean. It makes him sigh with exhaustion that has nothing to do with being tired and everything to do with yet again feeling like a complete shit. He tells himself that he’ll make up for it now. He’s been trying the last couple of years anyway. Drinking again or not, he can do this. He can bridge the gap that’s opened between him and Sam before it becomes a gulf.

He leaves his bedroom door open and sits up in bed after taking off his boots. One door down and across from his room a small rectangle of yellowish light spills out into the hall and John watches it while he sips from his bottle. He listens to Dean reading to Sam, his voice just loud enough to reach John’s ears. Still, he has to strain to catch some of the words, but he hears enough to know Dean is reading _Peter Pan_ to Sam. It makes him smile to himself in the dark as Dean reads on around a big yawn.

“Just one more page, Dean,” Sam urges him quietly.

“Okay, but that’s all, got it? I’m falling asleep here,” Dean says.

“Okay,” Sam agrees. “But… Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

“All right, you big baby,” Dean says.

“I am _not_ a baby,” Sam says. 

He’s not either, but he’s scared of the rats coming back into his dreams, too. Dean’s always been the best at keeping the nightmares away. He won’t tell Dean that though because Dean would probably get all cocky about it and that’s annoying. So, Sam, who has always been good at keeping secrets, holds that one close to his vest as well.

Dean sighs. “I know, Sam. I don’t think you’re a baby, not really. All right?”

“Yep,” Sam says.

“Okay then. Now shut up and lemme read this last page so we can sleep,” Dean says.

“Sure,” Sam says.

John takes another big slug of whiskey and stifles a yawn of his own. He’s grinning though, even if it is touched with a bit of regret. It should be him in there, he thinks, but damn if Dean isn’t good at this. He really is proud of the boy, he can’t deny that. He dozes off to the soft murmur of Dean’s voice and Sam’s soft encouragements, “Keep going, Dean.”

“All right, all right, I am, jeeze,” Dean grumbles. “I had to stop to breathe, dorkus.”

Sam nestles down in his blankets and grins at Dean, waiting for him to go on then. Dean reaches out and ruffles his hair. Sam sure is a little-little kid, he thinks. It’s a good thing he’s got Dean there to protect him. With that thought in mind, Dean starts reading again.

The last line of the book Dean reads to Sam that night is, _Boy, why are you crying?_

That line will follow Sam for the rest of his life. It will be there in the back of his mind in Dean’s softly murmuring voice every time he ever cries again. The timbre and tone of that voice will change as they grow older. It will grow up with Dean himself, but it will never be anyone else’s voice that asks Sam that. Sometimes he will have an answer for it and sometimes he won’t. That voice will always sound soft and soothing, curious, but concerned. It will only fail to calm Sam once in all the times he hears it.


	2. Chapter 2

_“One news came straight huddling on another_   
_of death and death and death.”_

— John Ford

Every day of their first month in Sioux Falls finds John glued to the television with Bobby riding shotgun in a ratty old plaid armchair. Until one night about two hours before dawn, Bobby curses and gets up to yank the plug out of the wall.

“I’m tired of seeing this,” Bobby says as he throws the cord down. He looks tired and disgusted as he shakes his head with a muttered, “Goddamn.”

He clumps off to bed after that and leaves John sitting on the sofa, staring at the black screen. Once he’s sure Bobby’s not coming back, he gets up and plugs the TV back in. He’s as tired of it as Bobby is, but he can’t stop watching. John is pretty sure a couple of the anchors on the Nebraska stations lately aren’t really journalists at all. Given the way they dress and deliver the reports, he’s started to think at least one of them is just a random Joe off the street. He sweats way too much for a professional and he has a high, almost reedy, voice; not one befitting that of a head anchor. Or any anchor at all, for that matter, at least not in John’s news viewing experience. Since some of the reports are about “mass migrations,” he doesn’t really wonder what happened to the other newscasters. 

It’s the violence that keeps dragging him back to the television set over and over again though. Mass migrations aren’t such a revelation—of course people are going to bail out on affected ( _infected_ ) areas in search of places that aren’t. The plague is the plague is the plague _ad infinitum_. It’s still scarier than anything to John, but it’s not changing, it’s not _fresh_ news anymore. The plague is the corrupt politician that the stations cannot shut about these days. Day in, day out, it’s a new wave of death hunkering down in major cities and unincorporated townships alike.

Rape, murder, plundering and pillaging and any combination thereof are the hot new stars on the global circuit. They’re playing shows in every part of the world now while the plague is cutting a path through humanity like a hungry shark. Humanity is responding in turn by trying to beat it to the genocidal punchline. 

Not only is there disease to worry about, there are also people and their batshit inability to cope with large-scale crisis. In the past week alone about twenty micro-wars (as Bobby has named them) have broken out globally, including one in Kansas where the plague came for the population and stayed for the barbecue. John smirks wryly to himself at the bad joke then takes a long swallow from his bottle. He got himself and the kids out of Lawrence right before the lid blew off and he’s so fucking glad about that he could cry. He’s so damned sad about what’s happening in Kansas that he could cry about that, too. John wonders if he might be a little depressed.

John watches the newest reports of “extreme violence” with the volume turned down low and nearly gags when the anchor uses the term “mass rape.” He doesn’t deign to explain what that means, but John can fill in the blanks for himself just fine. Mass rape, he figures, is the politically correct way of saying “gang bang.” _Mass_ though… that’s almost another beast entirely. One single syllable makes something disgusting even more so. _Mass_ … How many were there? John shakes his head to clear the numbers scrolling through his mind trying to reach a digit that qualifies as _mass_. He’s past fifty and feeling a little dizzy by the time he manages to rattle it loose completely.

Leaning back with his head resting on the worn red fabric of Bobby’s sofa, he stares at the ceiling. Dean’s bedroom is right over his head. There’s a very slim chance he is actually in his bed though. Sam had the first nightmare, but one got Dean the very next night. It’s been an ongoing thing now about four days a week since they parked the Impala in Bobby’s yard. More often than not, the boys sleep together or, once in a blue moon, they both pile up in the bed with John. Sam and Dean are getting too old to be sharing a bed, but he doesn’t say anything to them about it. Being scared in the middle of the night is bad enough. Being scared _and_ alone is even worse. 

_I could hear them screaming from inside the building, but the plague is everywhere, so I wasn’t about to go in there,_ John hears babbling from the screen. It’s a phone interview with a man who lived across the street from a suspected arson fire in a childrens’ home.

That does it. John gets up and flicks the old set off this time. As an afterthought, he yanks the plug out of the wall, too. He has no doubt it was arson. Burning, stabbing, shooting, bludgeoning—if there’s a violent way to murder someone (or a lot of someones) then people are doing it lately. Out of nothing more than blind, panicking fear. No one is safe anymore, that’s been more and more obvious since Valentine’s Day, but it’s getting worse now. Factor in the human element during any kind of crisis and you’ve got one hell of a mess. Human beings didn’t make it to the top of the food chain by right of their big brains alone, after all. They got there by being ruthlessly cruel and that skill shines more clearly during times like these.

John thinks all of that over, hands flexing on his knees as he looks at the tired, scuffed floorboards between his feet. As the sun rises over Singer Salvage Yard, he finally rises from the sofa with his mind made up. He may not be able to protect his boys from the plague, but he can damn sure teach them to defend themselves against their fellow man.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Borrowing time becomes an act of quiet, vigilant desperation for John over the next few months. He dragged the boys out of bed the very next day after unplugging the TV and started training them. He didn’t know where to start and he still has no idea how to teach a couple of kids about breaking a man’s neck if it comes down to a matter of them or the other guy. So, he’s fallen back on his military training, which has left him barking at his sons like a drill sergeant and pushing them until they’re near to collapsing some days.

One afternoon near the end of May, Bobby grabs his shoulder and tells him, “Stop it, John, they’re just kids. Let ‘em _play_ , for God’s sake.”

“No,” John says. He shakes him off and looks over at Dean standing beside the gas tank, holding his side and dripping with sweat. Sam’s right beside him, looking about two seconds away from all-out mutiny. John ignores both and simply says, “Again, Sam. If you can’t learn to throw your brother, how the hell do you think you’re ever going to be able to take me?”

“Dad…” Dean tries, but John shakes his head. “Do not _whine_ at me, Dean Winchester. Take your stance like I showed you and help your brother.”

“I don’t wanna do this anymore!” Sam hollers, losing his temper at last.

“Well, that’s too damned bad, Sammy,” John says. “Get your balance right and _do it_.”

“No!” Sam screams at him so loudly his voice breaks. The look he gives John tells him that if Sam thought he could get away with it, he’d hit him. Dean breaks position and grabs his arm, trying to shush him. “No, I won’t do it! I won’t! I won’t! I’m tired and I wanna go inside now!”

“Sam, that’s enough!” John snaps at him.

“No!” Sam yells right back. The resentment he’s started to feel for his father the past couple of months crawls along his skin like a rash. He spent his ninth birthday in Bobby’s backyard running laps and doing sit-ups and learning to block punches. He didn’t get any presents at all. Dad didn’t even _remember_ it was his birthday until Dean sang “Happy Birthday” to him at supper.

“Boy, one way or another, when I tell you to do something, you’re going to learn to listen to me,” John says.

He has a taste like aluminum and water in his mouth—sick and metallic, too wet—but it doesn’t stop him from closing the gap between him and the boys. This _has to be done_ , all of it. There is no other way. _Mass rape_ and all manner of other things are out there waiting for his sons. He’ll be goddamned if he’ll throw them to the wolves without even a stick to defend themselves with. They can piss and moan about it all they want to, but he’s doing this _for them_ and if it works, they’ll hopefully live long enough to understand it. If they survive the plague, that is. John can practically feel it breathing down their necks, creeping closer everyday. It’s only a matter of time—days, weeks, maybe a couple of months—before it gets to South Dakota, too. He can’t think about that though. He has to focus on what he can control. And this… _this_ … he can control.

That’s why when he yanks Sam around to the side yard, out of Dean’s sight, he spanks him so hard that by the time he’s done, Sam’s too winded to even cry. John turns around to find Dean standing at the corner of the house, watching them with his face white as a sheet and tears making his eyes glassy, too.

“I told you to wait in the backyard,” John says to him. He’s shaking like a fucking leaf, but he controls himself. He will not bend on this, not when there is so much at stake. He leaves Sam kneeling in the prickly grass and walks toward Dean.

“Dad?” Dean says. His voice cracks as he takes half a step away from John.

John doesn’t spank him, just gives his shoulder a gentle push to ease him forward when he draws even with him. “Go help your brother,” he says softly. His palm stings and his eyes are burning. He tells himself it’s from sweat and blinks it away. Pandering to his feelings really isn’t an option anymore. No more than pandering to the _wants_ of his sons. This is a game of survival now and that’s all about _needs_. He can’t take care of them if he caves just because they whine a little bit. “You’ve got two hours and then I want you both in the backyard again.”

“Dad… I don’t—” Dean tries.

“ _Dean_ ,” is all John has to say.

Dean scurries away from his father to go check on Sam who has finally caught his breath enough to start to cry. He’s mad and scared out of his mind about what he just saw their dad do. Sam shouldn’t have argued though. Dean tried to tell him, but Sam’s stubborn and won’t listen. Dad has a look in his eyes lately, a funny, kind of crazy look that Dean doesn’t like. It gets worse when Sam argues or balks at doing something. Dean feels guilty though, _really_ guilty, because he didn’t do more to try and protect Sam this time. He just stood there like a big dummy while Dad tanned Sam’s hide good and proper.

“You gotta stop fighting with him, Sammy,” Dean tells him as he strips off his shirt to wipe Sam’s face.

“No,” Sam chokes out after a couple of minutes. “I hate him.”

“Don’t say that, come on, it’s just Dad,” Dean says. “He was mad, that’s all.”

“I don’t _care_ ,” Sam snarls. His voice is muffled by Dean’s sweaty t-shirt as he scrubs his face with it.

Dean doesn’t know what to say, so he just slings an arm around Sam’s shoulders and squeezes. After a minute, he repeats, “You gotta stop fighting with him.”

“ _No_.” Sam’s voice is shaking and fierce this time as he turns his head to look at Dean. 

“Please?” Dean tries.

Sam doesn’t say anything, just ducks his head and huffs out a breath full of wounded pride and aching backside. It’ll become a constant between Sam and John from this day forward. That gap between them that John wanted to close so badly will become the gulf he worried about. Eventually, that gulf will yawn into an ocean neither of them can swim across again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The warmer weather slows the plague down a little bit, it always has. The scientists hadn’t been able to make the plague more warm weather friendly, maybe because they didn’t have the time to do so before the animal rights activists liberated it from its sterilized room. It doesn’t know and it doesn’t care, the plague just drags its heels on across the North American countryside, kicking up little puffs of dust and death as it goes. On the other side of the equator, it’s really having a high old time, flying around in the cooler air and making so many people sick to death in winter it’s almost funny.

Admittedly, it isn’t just the weather that slows the plague down. It gets a bit sidetracked by one hell of a blow-out in Topeka. It starts as a riot that turns into one of Bobby Singer’s so-called micro-wars. The plague livens up for that. Sitting in the groups of dirty, angry, scared people sharpening their knives and cleaning their guns really is a great way for it to get a second wind. Plague follows in the footsteps of war and that has never changed. The close proximity of sweating, filthy human bodies and the waste they leave behind from their meals are practically an engraved invitation.

It sidles up to even the most hale and hardy of men (or women or children) and helps itself to a little sit-down in their bodies. It watches through dozens of eyes and goes knock-knock-knocking at many doors once the micro-war really heats up. Summer may not be its favorite season, but the plague always thrives during wartime, regardless of the size, scale or time of year. It really brings people together in such hard times, reaching out and bridging the gaps between generations, classes, genders, races and even between man and livestock. Being the common thread that ties everyone together, the plague is full to overflowing of relay input from thousands upon thousands of souls.

During its travels through Topeka, it meets an obnoxious teenage boy that wears his bad attitude like a coat of armor. Deep down, the boy has the soul of a poet—and keeps a secret notebook hidden beneath a loose board in his bedroom full of stories and poems. Once the plague becomes a part of the obnoxious teenage boy’s life, it learns all about him in a very short time. His name is Brian and he’s had a crush on the sweet, single woman down the road since he was ten. It learns that the sweet, single woman has a nice rack (according to the teenage boy) and is named Georgia. Brian dies in the middle of a fever-ravaged masturbatory fantasy about Georgia’s rack and something about the glow of a glorious sunset. The plague isn’t sure how the two are related, but it understands that Brian was a romantic at heart. Georgia’s rack plus a sunset spelled l-o-v-e to Brian, the would’ve-been second Cummings.

The plague meets her next, purely by happenstance, only to learn that Georgia has fallen in love with the local reverend. She thinks he is a kind and admirably generous man. With his sparkling blue eyes and just the right touch of grey at his temples to make him look distinguished, he’s also a total dreamboat. She visits him often and is shyly blushing in his presence as the first flush of fever deepens the rosy pink of her cheeks. She goes home, claiming to feel tired—no one says they feel _ill_ anymore, but she knows. She cries and cries once she’s at home and then goes to her medicine cabinet and takes the bottle of painkillers she was prescribed for a knee injury not too long ago. Her shaking fingers are already turning black by the time she swallows the last pill.

Thanks to her, the plague is introduced to the much-adored Reverend Todson. Once inside him, the plague learns all about the reverend’s shameful love for dead boys. It disrupts his prayers for forgiveness with a throat full of blood and strangles him in his office before it ever has the chance to really run its course. No matter though, it learned plenty about the reverend. Including that he had an erection even as he recounted his list of dastardly sins. The plague doesn’t think Reverend Todson was really that sorry at all. At least his penis wasn’t.

It pings around a knitting circle in the church’s rec center later the same night. The ladies do their work, unaware that just down the hall, Reverend Todson lies dead on his wine-colored office carpet. Out in a field on the outskirts of town, gunfire cracks through the darkness. The ladies hunch their shoulders and talk louder. Their laughter is high-pitched and ringing with hysteria that threatens to bubble over into their careful needlework. One of the ladies goes home that night to her own teenaged son and coughs all over the house and right outside his bedroom door where he is standing and listening to her with hate in his heart and blood on his arms. She knows his most painful secret, but does not believe him.

The plague slips through the keyhole and right inside a dripping cut on the sad boy’s arm. In short order, it discovers his painful secret is that Reverend Todson loved him in all the wrong ways before he realized his tastes ran toward bodies with lower temperatures. The boy, Jordan, will survive the plague’s visit only to open his wrists a few months later to let all of his blood wash his pain away for good. The plague is no devil nor is it a saint. It’s merely a record keeper and it will take note of Jordan’s death through the eyes of a grey squirrel dying on a tree limb outside his bedroom window.

 _Y. pestis_ is the ultimate nosy neighbor and the best secret keeper no one will ever know. And _oh_ , what tangled webs people weave!

The swine from the hog farms in surrounding areas have begun to feast at night on the dead. Some will die from the plague as well, but most will trot back to their homes on dainty, gory hooves with their bellies full. Survivors will watch them go with a sense of overwhelming disgust for the creatures. Soon, word will spread along with the plague and by the end of the 20th century, pigs will be as reviled as wolves were in olden times. Wolves, on the other hand, will dine on the most succulent of porcine flesh once they begin to spread out again and people will leave them to it. The general consensus will be that wolves kill the hogs the way cats kill mice and rats. So long as neither turns on them, they’re content to let them be, almost thankful.

Near the middle of August the plague mostly leaves Topeka with a quiet _adieu_. It is reenergized, with a spring in its step and piles of dead people and animals in its wake. The snorts and grunts of feasting hogs answer back with a back-up chorus that sounds like the wet ripping of rotting flesh.

Transportation is still on the plague’s side and with all of the people running like startled hummingbirds from their homes it moves along at a brisk clip. There’s so much happening in other places outside of Kansas that it’s actually quite occupied despite its dislike for warmer weather. Little skirmishes are breaking out here and there—tiny town wars—more each day. Some big cities are veritable treasure troves of humanity’s madness and the plague greets as many as it can. _Good job!_ and _Well done!_ and _May I come in for a while?_ are what it tries to say to them. They’re just so goddamned helpful that it would be mean and unmannerly if it kept refusing the activity schedules being offered to it. 

It starts zipping around again at full capacity near the end of August. It feels a little forced at first, but that push gets it going. Back east, it takes a bite out of Asheville, North Carolina. Off to the west, it begins a ferocious meet-and-greet with Tucson, Arizona. Down south, it’s begun it’s descent into Fayetteville, Arkansas. In the Midwest, it finally makes its push into central Nebraska. Once it has touched down, it piggybacks from one host to another in a germy little chain reaction.

It’s right after sundown on a Saturday when the plague finally steps onto South Dakota soil and says howdy. The soft summer breeze sighs across the open plains as the plague looks to the horizon over endless miles. Its host, a used car salesman accompanied by his frightened, bird-boned wife, blinks to try and clear his blurring vision. Then he doubles over with a racking cough. Blood splatters shortly thereafter and the plague stumbles onward in its host a good ten feet before he collapses with a pained wheeze. His wife watches him go and shakes her head in shock before she runs away from his cries for help. She hasn’t loved him for the past decade anyway. The plague jogs along with her, settling into her system and looking forward to whatever may happen next.

~*~*~*~*~*~

In Sioux Falls they’ve fallen into something of a routine. It’s not a happy routine or even one that has a comfortable sense of familiarity, but it gets the job done. John won’t settle in and pretend everything is going to be okay and Bobby’s too smart to allow himself that luxury either. The boys are carrying on with their training, huffing and panting their way through endless maneuvers that John lays out for them. The nightmares don’t come as often now though because they’re usually too tired to dream much. It’s not an upside either of them really considers a bonus.

Sam still argues sometimes—he can’t help himself—and Dean still tries to make him stop. It’s just another part of the routine they’ve fallen into. They’re already getting better at fighting and self defense though. John prays that he’ll be given the time to train them _right_ , to make them the best. Best _what_ , he doesn’t know, he just keeps reminding himself of all the human badness out there and calls it good enough. He won’t acknowledge the word _soldiers_ , not even when he starts teaching them to shoot a gun.

In the evenings, after suggesting it may be a good idea if they actually learn more than how to throw a punch, Bobby schools them the best he can. It’s then that Sam brightens up and Dean picks at his scabby knees under the kitchen table. Dean’s not stupid, not even close, but when it comes to book learning, he’s lazy as all get out. Sam’s the bookworm, the wannabe scholar in a dirty t-shirt and he loves it.

The boys are in the middle of their nightly lessons and John’s standing on the back porch when the plague comes slouching into Sioux Falls. A rat stops to sniff the cooling body of a dead woman lying in a ditch about half a mile outside of town. Specks of blood get caught in its whiskers before it scampers off. Another rat, this one with bloody foam already on its mouth, stumbles on across the state line a few miles back. Soon, they follow one after another, like migrating to South Dakota is a collective idea.

John’s thinking about the news again—it’s become an obsession that he cannot shake. The last news report they heard was about a bunch of religious whackadoos in Tucson calling themselves the Knights of Christ. Their little congregation of crazy had the know-how and motivation to make it to a natural gas plant and set charges to blow. Tucson is a burning hole in the ground now and the newscaster out in Arizona—via a pre-recorded report delivered by telephone, as usual—said that parts of the desert seemed to have turned to glass from the heat. The next day, all they’d found on television was snow and the roar of static. 

Inside, he can hear Bobby teaching the boys about Napoleon. He thinks they may be a little too young to fully comprehend it, but then again, they’re smart kids. So maybe he ought to give them a bit more credit. He sips his drink and thinks that tomorrow he needs to make a run into town for supplies. They’re getting low on whiskey and other essentials. He and Bobby have been taking turns and if memory serves, John’s turn is up next.

He tells Bobby that after the kids are in bed and they’re sitting in the living room, watching the dark television set. Uneasiness blinks in the air all around them and they carefully ignore it as they drink their worries away for a little while.

“Be careful,” is all Bobby says. “If the television stations are gone then that means…”

“I know,” John says. “It’s close.”

“Yep,” Bobby says. “And it’s coming hard. For the news to’ve stopped now…” He trails off with a sigh and tugs his hat down further over his eyes. “Then there’s the crap about Topeka and Omaha that we did hear. All that tells me that things ain’t looking good for our little corner up here.”

“I know,” John says again. “But we have to eat.”

“Uh-huh,” Bobby says. He doesn’t sound very happy about it either. “We need to move on before too long. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Sittin’ here like this, we may as well _say_ we’re waitin’ on it.”

John can’t argue with him, but at the same time, he wants to know something. “Where the hell are we supposed to go? It’s _everywhere_ , Bobby.”

“Somewhere there ain’t a lot of people, that’s where,” Bobby says. “The way people are grouping together is a bad idea. They need to spread out and _stop moving in groups_. I read up on all of that and if there’s not enough of a population for that shit to get into then it’ll burn itself out. Least for a little while. They’re damned dirty and they’re even messier, which just lets the rats have a free-for-all and then what do you think happens? _More plague_ , that’s what. You’d think people woulda learned more from the shit storm back in the Middle Ages.”

John doesn’t have anything to say to that other than, “Huh.” Now he knows why Bobby’s been such a damned fishwife about them all bathing and helping him keep the house clean. He thought it was weird, but it’s also Bobby Singer and when you get past the gruff redneck exterior, he’s pretty damned eccentric.

“Huh,” Bobby says back. “You’re damned right, _huh_. You go into town tomorrow and buy up as much as you can. Then I vote we get the fuck out of this town.”

“I can do that,” John says. He’s already started making a mental list, in fact. At the top of it is ammo, pesticides and soap. After a few minutes, something else occurs to him. “Drake’s Pharmacy is closed on Sundays, right?”

“Yeah,” Bobby says. He cuts his eyes to the side and gives John a suspicious look. “Antibiotics won’t help this if we get slapped down though, so what’s with the breaking and entering all of a sudden?”

“We’ll need medication for other things,” John says. “Medical supplies, too, like gauze and bandages. We can’t cure this fucking plague, but we can treat the flu if we come down.”

“Good point,” Bobby says. He’s a little miffed he didn’t think of that himself, actually. “Do me a favor and don’t get caught though.”

“I won’t,” John says. He’s hit a point by now that he thinks even if he did get caught, he’d put a bullet in whoever tried to stop him. Survival of the fittest doesn’t have any wiggle room available for standing around so he can be read his Miranda rights.

Bobby dozes off in his chair a little while after that and John plucks his glass from him before it hits the old rug. He finishes Bobby’s drink for him and then takes care of his own before he throws an old quilt over Bobby. John clumps off upstairs, headed for bed, but before he turns in, he looks in on Sam and Dean. He’s unsurprised to find them curled up in bed together, Sam’s elbow digging into Dean’s cheek where he’s rolled over on it. John shakes his head and goes on to his room where he lays down for a night of broken sleep and weird dreams.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He doesn’t make it to Sioux Falls until late Sunday afternoon. He spent the day helping Bobby pack up everything they can carry and load it into an old van Bobby’s been tinkering with the past couple of days. When they’re done with that, John takes the time to actually play with the boys for a couple of hours before shooing them in for baths.

John leaves Bobby teaching the boys how to play poker and heads into town with the summer sun slowly setting at his back. Town is quiet and still, save a couple of people walking along, looking tense and lost. People aren’t totally stupid, John knows they’ve all figured what the lack of newsfeeds mean, too.

Church parking lots are packed and houses along the way all show darkened windows and undoubtedly locked doors. John sighs and hopes McGowan’s Grocery is open today. Usually it is, but after the loss of the news, he can’t say for sure. Delivery trucks have stopped, too and the last time Bobby came back from the store, he said it was all picked over. Even still, John’s trying to be hopeful, although he doesn’t think he’s going to get much bang for his buck. Old man McGowan already price gouges like the bastard he is and he’s been jacking up prices a little higher every day supplies grow scarcer.

The store is open, but the only person working is McGowan himself. John gets into a shouting match with him over a five pound sack of potatoes being marked at ten dollars. There’s no way he’s paying that and he’ll be damned if he’s going to be robbed by some old man in bib overalls. It takes John pointing a gun at him to get the fucker to come down on his prices.

In the end, John walks out of the store with two carts full of picked over, verging on expired, groceries at the closest thing to “average cost” anyone ever gets. He unloads the groceries and creeps on down the road to Drake’s Pharmacy, all the while hoping like hell McGowan doesn’t call the cops. What he did at McGowan’s was _stupid_ and he knows it, but stress and nerves have made him ill-tempered. John tells himself to _get a grip_ and then carries on with his plan because he doesn’t have another choice.

The pharmacy is actually a pretty easy deal. He picks the lock on the backdoor and while doing so, reminds himself to teach Sam and Dean to do that, too. Then he’s inside and there’s no blare of an alarm, only the glow of streetlights to illuminate the inside of the drugstore. John has a flashlight, too, but he only uses that in the back so no one who may happen by will see it. He takes bottles of everything he recognizes—and bottles of a couple of things he doesn’t know, but thinks Bobby may. He goes through the front of the store, taking everything from peroxide to bars of soap. When he’s done, he can’t help but laugh softly and be glad he parked the Impala in the alley near the door.

By the time John is done with all of his shopping, which concludes with a stop at the local gas station to fill up the Impala and get a few more cans of go-juice, he heads back through town the way he came. It’s then he sees a man limping down the sidewalk toward where John is stopped at a red light. At first he thinks nothing of it, but as the man draws closer, John realizes he’s weeping and he’s also _staggering_. Either the man is drunk or has rabies—or the plague’s got him.

“Shit, fuck, _no_ ,” John snarls as he stomps on the gas and roars through the light. He glances in the rearview mirror in time to see the old man fall to his knees just as the light clicks over to green. His hands grip the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white and he grits his teeth as he presses the accelerator harder.

He’s been in the town, all over the place, touching things and speaking to a couple of people. John is scared out of his mind as he hauls ass back to Bobby’s. Once there, he lays down on the horn until Bobby comes outside. About five feet from the car, John holds up a hand to make him stop.

“It’s here,” he says through the crack in his window.

“What, the poltergeist?” Bobby says. His voice is easy and his sarcasm is casual, but he backs up a couple of steps, too.

John just looks at him with scared brown eyes and Bobby frowns. “I don’t know if I’m okay or not.”

“Balls!” Bobby snarls even as he backs up more. He makes himself stop though and think for a minute. “You got anything in there that’s gonna spoil?”

“No,” John says. He bought non-perishable items since the plan was for them to be hitting the road. Anything else is already in the house, waiting to be packed last-minute into the coolers they’ve cleaned out. Bobby’s second freezer is full of nothing but ice for that very purpose.

“Then you stay out here for a couple of days, right there in that car,” Bobby tells him. “I’ll come out and check on you every few hours and see how you’re doing. If you’re still all right in forty-eight hours then you’re gonna be all right. I’ll tell the boys somethin’, if I can think of anything.”

“Tell them the truth,” John says. The time for lying to them about this mess is well and truly over. “Don’t you dare let them come out here though.”

“I won’t,” Bobby says. He scrubs his face and pushes down the squirming knot of dread and worry in his throat. “I’ll see ya in a couple hours then.”

“All right,” John says. He watches Bobby turn and go back inside. When he’s gone, John presses his forehead to the steering wheel and begs who or whatever may be listening to let him be in the clear.

~*~*~*~*~*~

While John sits in the Impala, eating dry cereal and pissing in empty soda bottles, waiting to see if he’s going to die, the plague kicks up its heels in Sioux Falls. It dines on old and young alike and takes a particularly nasty bite out of old man McGowan with a taste of its bubonic form before pulling the old switcharoo on him and turning pneumonic in the wee hours of the second day it has been a guest in his body. It plays the same dirty trick on 12 year old Lindsay Gibson and 32 year old Aaron Weiss. Aaron actually thought he was starting to feel a wee bit better until he felt a flutter in his chest and coughed blood all over his pillowcase a moment later.

The plague sneaked into Sioux Falls with such stealth that people are caught in its snare before they have time to freak out and riot or start a micro-war of their own. Sioux Falls, like quite a few other towns, goes with shocking quietness into that good night the first couple of days. By the third day, people are too damned scared or sick to bother kicking up much of a fuss. Only a few aren’t even the slightest bit feverish and most of them shag ass out of Sioux Falls before dawn of the third day. The town mayor and a young sheriff’s deputy by the name of Mills are the only healthy ones left.

As Bobby and the boys are welcoming John back into the house, the two survivors are meeting up on the edge of town. They stare at each other with haunted eyes.

“They’re all dying,” the mayor says.

“No shit,” Mills responds. Her lips twist into what tries to be a sneer, but it’s trembling at the corners as she twists her wedding ring around her finger.

“We have to do something,” the mayor says. It’s a hollow thing to say and they both know it.

Still, Mills coughs out a laugh and then something in her gaze sharpens. “How about we burn it down?”

“What? Are you out of your mind? We can’t burn a whole city!” the mayor yells at her.

“Yes, we can,” Mills tells him. “We’ll need help though.”

“And where the hell do you think we’re going to find that?” the mayor asks her. He’s taken to the idea without fully admitting it to himself yet. If they burn Sioux Falls then they can contain the outbreak to here and here alone—at least for now. It won’t stop the plague, but it may well slow the spread of it.

Mills thinks about it for a while and when the idea comes to her, she shrugs and thinks it’s worth a shot. “You know Bobby Singer?” she asks him.

“The town drunk?”

“The one and only,” Mills says with a quick smile. “A drunk he may be, but he’s also damned smart and I’ve got a feeling he may know a thing or two about how to set a good fire.

The mayor sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. He’s quiet for too long and Mills has to clear her throat to get his attention. “It’s worth a shot,” he says as he throws his hands into the air. It’s a helpless, hopeless gesture, not a frustrated one. He feels like he’s been turned upside down and shaken hard. Of all the residents of Sioux Falls, he remained the most hopeful, the one who wanted to believe more than anyone else that as the months dragged on, perhaps they would be spared from this.

“Let’s go then,” Mills says. She’s got a feeling, call it woman’s intuition, that if they don’t hurry it up, Bobby Singer’s going to be long gone from the vicinity of Sioux Falls. If he’s not dead already, she reminds herself as she gets into her car.

They get to Singer Salvage in time to find Bobby outside with a man they’ve never seen before and two young boys. They’re busily loading supplies into an old black car that’s in fine shape and an old white van that looks like a bruised turd.

“Bobby Singer!” Mills calls as she steps out of her vehicle. The four near the house have all turned to look at her. The two adults regard her and the mayor with deep suspicion and the kids watch her with curiosity. When the smallest boy smiles at her, Mills smiles back at him.

“Stay where you’re at, Jodie!” Bobby hollers back to her. “Don’t you come a step closer, you hear?”

“I’m not sick, Bobby!” she yells back. She gestures at the mayor who’s still in his car. “Neither is he. So far as we can tell, we’re it, too.”

“Then go be _it_ somewhere else and get off my property,” Bobby calls out before going back to loading the van.

The other guy stays still and doesn’t say a word. He keeps one hand on each boy’s shoulder and watches Mills and the mayor carefully. She knows he’s got a gun on him just like she knows Bobby’s got a shotgun hidden in the bed of the van he’s busily loading again. One wrong move and she’s going to be Swiss cheese. Damn fool that she is, she’s not even wearing her service weapon. It makes her heavy heart lob hard in her chest, but she can’t quit now. She came here for a reason.

“Not until I ask you something,” Mills says.

Bobby stiffens and glances over his shoulder at her. “What in hell do you _want_ , woman?”

“I want to know what _you_ know about starting fires,” she says. She pauses for a moment to make sure she’s got his attention then takes a deep breath and carries on. “Big ones.”

“What exactly are you askin’ me here, Jodie?” Bobby asks as he turns back to look at her again.

“I think you know,” is all she says and Bobby’s nod is all the answer she needs.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A couple hours later and they have a plan ironed out. It’s not the best plan in the world, but it’s a workable one. Before they can head out, Bobby gives them all surgical masks he found while going through John’s pharmacy loot. He probably grabbed them by accident, but as Bob Ross would say, it was a _happy accident_.

“These won’t save your asses from fleas, but they will save you from the coughing plague, so you damn well better wear ‘em,” Bobby says as he hands them out.

“Where’d you get these?” Mills asks him.

Bobby just shrugs and John doesn’t say a word, but he does shush Dean when he opens his mouth.

“Uh-huh,” Mills says. She knows about the pharmacy break-in and now she’s got her doer—or doers—but it’s a little too late to be upholding the law now, so she lets it go.

They put on their masks and head back into town with the heavy burden of what they’re about to do trailing along beside them all like a ten ton hound dog.

It’s near sunset when they’ve got everything done that they can do. The streets of Sioux Falls are eerily quiet, except for the faint moaning and crying that comes from a few houses. As he takes a lighter from the mayor’s shaking hand, John doesn’t try to pretend it’s the wind making that noise.

“Ready?” is all he asks.

“Yeah,” Bobby says.

A beat later, Mills nods and says, “On your count.”

John glances behind him at the boys sitting together in the front seat of the Impala. Their eyes are big above their surgical masks and he gives them a quick smile to try and reassure them, but he doubts it does much good since his face is hidden behind his own mask. He doesn’t think it’d do much good anyway though. Like he knows: they’re smart kids and they heard what they all discussed back at Bobby’s. Once they set this fire then they’ll be on their way out of Sioux Falls for good and John sets his sights on that now. This has to be done and when it is, they can be on their way to somewhere (hopefully) safer. 

Turning back, John nods. “Okay then.” He flicks his lighter and hears Mills and Bobby do the same. “Three,” is all he says before stooping and holding the tiny flame to his fuse. It’s made of twisted paper until it runs into gas-soaked cloth about six feet down. It lays all over Sioux Falls; a huge, stinking serpent made of multicolored cloth, paper, bits of wood and every kind of combustible substance they could find. Mostly it’s gasoline and kerosene, but there’s paint thinner and nail polish remover in there as well. The air around them is toxic with fumes, but in the middle of town lies the real doozy, something John and Bobby put together on the fly. John has to say, the dynamite was a lucky find, but he wants the fuck out of the way before the place blows.

Bobby and Jodie Mills follow his lead and they all four stand back as the fire begins to eat through the dry paper. When it touches the gas-soaked sheets, it roars to life and takes off like a shot. It’s mesmerizing and despite each and every one of them telling their feet to move, they can’t do it, not yet.

Sam and Dean watch the fire glow light up the streets of Sioux Falls and after a few minutes, Sam closes his eyes to block out the sight. Dean can’t look away from it, it’s as terrible as it is beautiful, but when people start to cry out, he does cover his ears and makes Sam do the same. When the first flaming body comes tumbling from an upstairs window, Dean finally squinches his eyes closed and begins to hum loudly to help drown out the noise. Beside him, he can feel Sam shaking and thinks he may be crying, but he can’t force his eyes open to check.

John’s back in the car a moment later and cranks it up then throws it in reverse. The sound of other engines catching and doing the same follow suit. “Don’t look, boys, don’t you dare,” John tells them. His voice is shaking.

He gets the car turned around and guns the engine, half an ear cocked back toward Sioux Falls, listening for the final _boom!_ When it comes, he instinctively ducks his head and reaches out to make the boys do the same. The car swerves wildly, but he regains control and keeps going. In his rearview mirror, he sees Bobby flick his lights to let him know he’s okay and then he looks back at the road.

“Dad?” Sam asks.

“It’s okay, boys, it’s okay,” John tells them. Then he reaches out and flips on the stereo. Black Sabbath fills the car and John makes himself relax into the opening strains of “N.I.B.”

Behind them, the plague screams with human mouths as its stronghold in Sioux Falls, South Dakota is eaten by flames.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Out of the ashes of Sioux Falls the Reapers are born. The day they set the place alight they have no idea what will come of it, but they secretly fear being arrested for such a heinous crime. And it _is_ a crime, despite their good intentions, but Johnny Law never comes a’calling for them. Mostly because Johnny Law is dead, dying or waiting for his turn in the plague’s playpen.

Thanks to the mayor and his big mouth, what happens is the exact opposite. Ever the politician, he is almost compelled to talk—at a safe distance while wearing his surgical mask—to people they meet along the way. He tells of what they have done in Sioux Falls with a voice that shakes with shame and yet, there is righteousness there, too. He speaks with purpose when he speaks of _containment_. He unintentionally dubs them all unsung heroes of a sort and venerates them for what they did. In a small, dying town called Vanitas someone hears the mayor’s words and comes forward to ask them to do the same there. Not knowing what else to do, John, Bobby and Jodie agree. Sam and Dean wait in the locked Impala while their father lays fuses and rigs crudely made bombs to go off.

Word begins to spread among communities of survivors who are still flocking together in sheep-like ignorance. Those who make it out of those clumps alive will go on to the next settlement carrying their tale with them. It isn’t long before someone comes looking for John Winchester and finds the former mayor of Sioux Falls instead. He’s more than happy to direct that person to a place called Blue Shoe, Wyoming where John has gone with Jodie, Bobby and the boys.

Blue Shoe is an unincorporated township that mostly caters to big game hunters from out of state with deep pockets and itchy trigger fingers. It’s sparsely populated, having only a few year-round residents and it’s rural in the extreme, which means lots of space between one house and the next. The mayor didn’t want to go to Blue Shoe with the rest of them because righteous or not, he still felt guilty about Sioux Falls. So, after the burning of Vanitas, he went south while the others went further north. That does not, however, keep him from running his mouth about the location of the others.

That man, the former sheriff of Laramie, makes it to Blue Shoe alive and well aside from the fact he’s cold and hungry. There, after he finds John and convinces him to lower the rifle he has pointed at his head, he makes John an offer he can’t refuse. John accepts both out of a sense of mercy for the man and because he needs the supplies he’s being offered in payment upon his arrival and successful torching of Laramie. John tells Bobby and Bobby tells Jodie and so, on a sunny day in early fall, they set out with Zippos in their pockets and fire licking at their brain stems. Sam and Dean ride shotgun beside their father.

The name for them, for the men and woman who do what others are too sick or afraid to do themselves, comes a few years later. A kind of mythology begins to spring up around the Reapers. That mythology grows as more people come to join the fight against the plague, each one with a box of matches or a cigarette lighter and one, a man named Rufus, with a tinderbox.

They’re efficient, but sloppy at first, and a few of the fires rage out of control. They creep with licking orange tongues and flickering paws into woodlands and survivor camps. They cause more damage than they’re meant to and the Reapers begin to reformulate their approach. As more join their group, everyone cautious and skittish of the others at first save a few who hit it off right away, they map out a way to contain and control the fires better. It takes a few tries, but eventually they get it right. It becomes both an art and a science when it comes to this game of survival. The stink of rotting flesh and gasoline shimmers in the air the sunny, cold November evening they all watch their plan prove successful.

Some of the new Reapers only have the stomach for it once and then they drift away. It’s the euthanizations that usually get them out of the game after one go. They all decided that November day that they weren’t just going to light the fires and let that be the end of it. What they’re trying to do is _stop_ some of the suffering from spreading and letting people burn alive only extends it longer. So, they start going inside of buildings to do more than lay fuses. They go inside to put the sick and dying out of their misery. It makes them _all_ sick at first, some more than others, but the core of their group stays together while others still flee because they cannot bear it.

Other Reapers only survive one reaping, maybe two or three, before the plague taps them on the shoulder and asks for a dance. Others come back time and again, a small group of people, eight in total. One is a young man not much older than Dean named Ash and he’s the first they lose to a fire. He doesn’t make it out of a burning one day when the explosive he set to go blows too early and leaves him buried in pieces beneath the rubble of a barroom. Everyone tries to convince themselves it was quick as they light their individual fuses before moving back to watch the fire.

It takes a few more years, but the Reapers start wearing black; the color of soot and mourning and coal and death. John starts it by accident—black clothes are the only clean clothes he has that particular day—but some follow suit after him. Others there to witness the burning that day begin to whisper, _Reapers always wear black. Beware should they come to your town._ So, in the way of things, wearing black becomes the unofficially official uniform of the Reapers. Everyone else, on the other hand, stops wearing all black clothing as word spreads farther and farther in a weird game of telephone. They may wear black pants or a black shirt, but never both together. 

Sam and Dean grow up in the shadow of the Reapers, surrounded by black clothing that always carries the acrid tang of smoke and the fried chicken skin stink of burned flesh.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Their adopted home in Blue Shoe was once a rich man’s hunting lodge built out of blue granite blocks and fieldstones. John found it their second day there and moved the boys in. While it’s a house meant for a man, there is a woman’s touch all over the place, from the drapes that match the furniture to the way the pictures are hung on the walls. There are a few pictures of a man with silver hair and ruddy cheeks standing beside a woman who is much younger than he is. Her hair is dark, but her eyes are darker and they seem to dance with shadowy fear above her wide, lipsticked smile. In some pictures she’s holding a towheaded little boy on her lap. He has eyes the color of the sky and is always hugging his mother. John goes through the house that first day and removes every single one of those pictures because he knows those people are probably dead now and he can’t stand to look at the faces of who they used to be.

John continues training Sam and Dean until they are a couple of the toughest boys out there. No one messes with them much anyway because Sam and Dean wear Reaper Black, too, but they’ve got the skills to defend themselves—lethally if need be—should anyone decide to give it a go. They are being groomed to take up the family business and Dean greets it with enthusiasm while Sam balks at the idea. He’s watched his father burn town after town after town. He’s seen him shoot a man down in the street as he staggered toward them with blood on his face like red lacquer. He doesn’t want that life, but it looks like it’s the only choice he has.

He sticks to quieter things when he can, like watering the dozen and a half dieffenbachia plants they have in the house. They’re poisonous, dangerous even to humans, but only mildly. However, to rats they are lethal. The plants are the fruits of some of Bobby’s research into natural pest control and Sam takes up the responsibility of keeping everything running on that end. His dad and brother have black thumbs anyway, so it’s really better he does it.

Sam also makes sure he keeps rosemary oil out in shallow bowls on windowsills next to the cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil, all things Bobby distills (along with moonshine) himself. Peppermint oil also keeps rats away, just like the mothballs scattered under the house, in the basement and in the attic are supposed to. Rosemary naturally repels fleas, according to Bobby’s research. He’s growing a veritable jungle out at his place twenty miles northeast of where the Winchesters live. Come winter, he drags every single pot inside with him to keep his babies warm and safe. John and the boys do the same with theirs. The whole house smells like rosemary and peppermint, it sticks to their skin and clothes, noticeable even under the sharp smell of smoke after a burning. 

Boric acid lines their windowsills and is drawn in a thick line around all their doors. They sow diatomaceous earth into their gardens and sprinkle it on top of the soil as well. It lies in a thin white coating under their beds and the sofa and in the cupboards beneath the sinks. They can feel the faint grit of it in their bedclothes where they sprinkle it. The corpses of dead insects threaten to pile into small drifts in the summertime when bugs are the worst because the diatomaceous earth and boric acid eat into their thin exoskeletons and leave them dead from dehydration before they can make it inside.

In their blue granite house, John can keep his boys safer with those things (and the few cans of Raid he has stockpiled) than he could in a fortress. He still takes them out on burnings until Dean is old enough to be trusted to watch Sam on his own. It’s a ridiculous way to be since Dean’s been watching Sam _on his own_ since he was eight or nine, but John’s still trying to make up for that. Besides, it was a hell of a lot different back in Lawrence where there were neighbors or—God forbid—police to call if they really needed help. Leaving two young boys alone in a house in the woods in the dead of winter with five feet of snow on the ground is a different thing altogether. John waits until Dean is 14 before he even begins leaving them alone during the warmer months. Dean is 16 when he starts doing it in wintertime, too, and by then Dean is bugging him to let him help lay fuses for a burn.

John finally relents the next spring and Dean takes up a lighter of his own not two months later. Sam is there, sitting in the car, watching as his brother lights his fuse and he doesn’t miss the way Dean’s hand trembles. Dean glances over his shoulder to dart a quick look at Sam, checking on him and also silently asking if he saw; if he’s proud. Sam looks down at the book in his lap.

Dean went willingly into this and before long Sam will be doing it, except not willingly. John may wait until he’s 18 before he draws him into it officially, but Sam knows his day as a Reaper will come and that some of the screams rising into the heat-shimmering air will be because of him. He understands the _why_ of it, even the importance of what they do, but he still doesn’t want that blood on his hands. It’s strange how they already feel slicked with it though.


	3. Chapter 3

_“Miserable, wild, distracted. The dregs of the people alone survive.”_

— Epithet on a church wall, ca. 1350

While John Winchester and his merry band of Reapers continue to lay waste to the countryside in an effort to shut the plague down, it gambols along, injured a bit, but mostly undeterred. Fire cleanses and kills, that it knows, but it knows something else, too, something it learned from all those mad, bad Christians back in the 1300s: Its name is also Legion, for it is many.

The old woman who first named it way back when in a dying town called Caffa had blubbered that out around a mouthful of stinking saliva. Her throat had been black-green with wet gangrene, but still she’d spoken and given _Y. pestis_ a new name. It took its understanding of _Legion_ from her and while it has never personally known a man named Jesus, it understands the concept of what he supposedly did quite well. Though be damned if it would go charging off a cliff into an ocean because _honestly_. That’s just silly and the plague is not so easily compelled to do the bidding of man.

It really doesn’t care for the Reapers though, they’re a disruption in the grand scheme of things. The plague tries to make a few of them realize that, but mostly they just moan and cry and vomit and shit blood. It’s terribly inconvenient to be mute, it really, really is. If only it could figure out how to make human fingers work for it then it’d get the job done, but so far, no dice there. It’s tried. It can disrupt their nervous systems, make them do a little jig or rip away gobbets of their own flesh. It made hundreds do the Mardi Gras Mambo down in New Orleans ( _laissez les bons temps rouler!_ ). It still cannot make anyone set down its decree to the Reapers: _Stop this at once!_

After a fashion, it stops trying to take up graffiti as a hobby and slouches onward. It still has quite the monopoly on southern California and it takes bite after bite out of Miami. It learns there was once a music album entitled _The Bass that Ate Miami_ , but it feels that’s an exaggeration since Miami is still there. _The Plague that Ate Miami_ , now that has a better ring to it. But while it can nest in the bodies of recording artists, it can no more make them sing than it can make others write.

There is one guy he makes sing, but mostly he just goes on about a _Merry-go, merry-go, merry-go-round, boop-boop-boop-boop_. Honestly, the plague is not sure if that’s its doing or if the guy’s just nuts. Well, it knows he’s insane and unmedicated, but it doesn’t know if that’s why he’s singing or not. Sometimes humans are just confusing, but the plague likes that one a bit and on its fourth day with him, it lets go. Off he goes down Hollywood Boulevard one day a few weeks later, weak, but feeling refreshed as he thumps on the hollow body of his upside down guitar. The plague watches him go off into the sunset through the eyes of a stray dog before it turns its attention away to chew at the base of its mangy tail.

Out in Montana it capers about under the endless blue of the state’s so-called “big sky.” It finds its way to a little place with a big lake and sets up shop there for a while. There are herbs and chants at first, but soon there are bodies lying out in the hills with their best clothes on and their prettiest hatchets and beads beside them. Sometimes at night young men come and take those things from the bodies even though there are no longer tourists to sell them to. They never stop to think about the rats that have been there, uninterested in the bodies, but thoroughly enamored with the bits of food left with them. Most of those young men die terribly and the plague claps along with their feverishly galloping pulses until they stop.

On other nights, the pigs come and take away everything they can chew. The people down in the valley are horrified as they lie in their beds at night, listening to the dainty clip-clop of piggy hooves going out of town towards the hills. Come dawn, the sound returns as the pigs head for home once again, ever creatures of habit, ever carriers of the demon called Legion. The plague may be being a bit snobbish, but it would never settle down in the bodies of swine to _stay_. However, it occasionally gets a nibble of bacon and when that happens, it doesn’t have much choice. It is as much a slave to its hosts and vectors as they are to it. 

Late one night, while the plague bores into the bloodstream of a little girl, an old white Ford truck roars to life from the lean-to garage that houses it and peels away into the pitch darkness. The little girl is in agony and she’s crying and crying through her fever while her scat-daddy little feet drum against her thin mattress (she has rhythm, the plague will give her that) as the blackness creeps over them as well.

“Mommy, please make it go away,” she squalls.

Heartbroken and terrified, a woman who has loved her little girl since she first held her, pushes snarled black hair away from her grey face. “Okay, love, okay. Mama’s gonna make it better, I promise.”

She leaves the room and the plague waits, curious as the clock continues to run out. It’s been with the little girl for two hours now and already knows she would’ve grown up to be a dancer and a beautifully talented one at that. In 12.5 hours that dream will be soundly crushed, but them’s the breaks, as they say in showbiz. The plague is a record keeper and historian, but it’s also a fortune teller of what could’ve been, a gypsy with no need for a crystal ball. It shows the little girl what she would’ve looked like on stage, dancing the lead in _Swan Lake_. It distracts her from her agony for a while. The plague’s happy to help where it can.

When the girl’s mother comes back, her face is wet with tears and there’s snot smeared on her upper lip. “Baby, keep your eyes closed,” she murmurs. There’s not much point, the child is lost in the fever dream the plague provided her with while it chews through her veins. She’s even smiling a little.

The mother takes a revolver from behind her back and takes aim at her little girl’s head. Her little fingers are all black and the skin is starting to split. Her baby, her only sweet baby is rotting right in front of her. The child is smiling, but there are tears streaming down her ashen face and over her fever-reddened cheeks. Her body quivers with pain.

“My precious girl,” the mother whispers. Her trembling lips twist with pain as her heart tries to strangle her. She says a quick prayer, closes her eyes and pulls the trigger. The sound is very loud in the small, cramped child’s room.

Humans often prove to be as surprising as they are confusing and the plague _did not_ see that one coming. A lot of the time it has something to do with a thing called _love_ and another thing called _mercy_. The plague can’t help but be curious, it always has been. It resolves to gather more data on these things because they really are fascinating.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s a beautiful summer day in Elmo, Montana the day the Reapers arrive to wipe it off the map. Storm clouds gather in the north, but over the town itself the sky is clear and blue. There’s a light breeze around them as they all step out of the Impala. They’ve parked by the shore of a lake named after the Native American tribe whose reservation it lies on. The lake itself is a sight to behold, with water an achingly rich shade of mirrored blue that reflects the sky and trees surrounding it. The gentle breeze ruffles the surface of the water just enough to make it look like it is shivering. Like it knows what’s coming next.

Dean looks toward the town, visible about a half mile away, and bites his bottom lip against a laugh. Burning isn’t funny, not at all, but the _name_ of the place is. He’s telling himself, _Don’t do it… don’t do it…_ , but as they round the hood of the Impala together—John, Dean and Sam—he does it anyway.

In a high, childish voice, Dean says, “Elmo doesn’t like this plague anymore.” Then he snickers, head hanging with a touch of shame. Yet, in typical Dean fashion, he carries on. “Elmo wants this plague to be over now.”

John cuffs him smartly on the back of the head. “Shut up, Dean.”

“Sorry, sir,” Dean says. He rubs the back of his head and cuts his eyes to his right to look at Sam. He’s got his own head down, but Dean can see his smile.

“I thought it was funny,” Sam whispers out of the side of his mouth.

“Thanks,” Dean says. He ducks his head even lower to hide his bigger grin. He thought it was funny, too, but their dad seems to have lost his sense of humor a couple of years back.

“Come on,” John says. He tugs at Dean’s coat sleeve to get him moving.

Before they go though, Sam grabs Dean’s other arm. “Don’t forget, okay?”

“Do I ever?” Dean says. He glances toward Elmo, waiting silent and sad in the near distance. “I doubt they have a library there though, but I’ll look.”

“Okay,” Sam says.

It’s become a thing since Dean started helping with the burns. If there’s a place with a library, he always checks it out before laying fuses inside the building. He takes a bag with him to put any books or old magazines in that look like Sam may enjoy them. Sam’s not a hard sell though. He’ll read almost anything, from dust-dry biographies to romance novels. Dean still looks for what may promise to be the best of the best in any of those genres though.

“See ya in a bit, Sammy,” Dean says.

“It’s _Sam_ ,” is the response he gets.

He glances over his shoulder at his brother leaning against the Impala with the wind combing through his dark hair and grins at his teenage sulking. “Sammy,” Dean says again before John gives a harder yank to his coat sleeve and drags him away.

Dean watches him over his shoulder for a few more feet, grinning back at Sam’s scowl and thinking he’s done a really good job taking care of his little brother. He’d never say that out loud where John could hear him, but he’s convinced it’s his doing that Sam’s 16 now and may get to grow up after all. Sam’s a lot taller, too; all gangly string bean limbs and torso, but _wow_. His brother is going to be a giant when he’s done growing and that makes Dean feel downright giddy. He thinks if it hadn’t been for him insisting that Sam needed vitamins when they raided pharmacies then maybe he wouldn’t have gotten so tall. Or maybe it’s the milk Dean learned to procure straight from the source—be it goat or cow—through trial, error and one supremely disgruntled kick to the shoulder. Perhaps it’s even because Dean always made sure to cook enough that Sam got extra. He doesn’t know, but he sure is glad. He’d rather have a giant for a brother than a malnourished, stunted pygmy.

Up ahead, the others in their group are waiting and raise their hands in greeting. John and Dean wave back as, behind them, Sam looks away from the sick town to stare out at the water and listen to the wind whispering through the evergreens near the shore. He hears Jo Harvelle, who is older than Sam and younger than Dean, call out a happy greeting to his brother. Her dad, Bill, died of the plague and her mom, Ellen, started burning with the Reapers a couple of years later. She didn’t want Jo to do it, but after catching Jo sneaking around and laying fuses on her own a couple of times, Ellen started letting her come along.

Sam curls his lip in annoyance when he hears Dean call back to her. Their voices fade away as they move closer to Elmo, but Jo’s high, fake sounding laughter echoes back over the lake to Sam. He still hasn’t decided if he likes Jo or not. Her mom is pretty cool; tough as nails, but kind to him and Dean when they’re around. Jo though, no, he’s not sure. She irritates him in an indescribable way with how she lights up when she sees Dean and is always _talking_ to him. Sam doesn’t like the way Dean talks back or the way he smiles at her either. He also doesn’t like the way Jo is always looking at him like she wants him to go away when she’s trying to talk to Dean. When Dean’s not around, Jo’s nice to him and they mostly get along. He can’t put a finger on everything about her that bugs him, but the last couple of things are no-brainers. The rest he doesn’t totally understand, but he knows sometimes he kind of wants to punch Jo in her stupid face.

With a huff of breath that temporarily blows his bangs out of his eyes, Sam goes around the car to get his fishing pole out of the trunk. Flathead Lake is beautiful and he can see the ripples from fish strikes on its surface out there. There seem to be plenty of them and they’re active, so he thinks in a couple hours time he should have more than enough fish to make himself a decent lunch. By the time the others are back, he’ll have caught more, enough that they’ll all have something to eat while they keep an eye on Elmo as it burns.

It doesn’t take him long to catch a young cutthroat trout that’s too small to eat, but is just the right size to use for baiting his hooks with. He’s running low on crickets. He cuts the fish up and proceeds, trying to pretend he can’t smell the faint nostril-tickling scent of gasoline carried to him on the breeze.

After a while of fishing right off the shore beside where the Impala is parked, Sam moves to get out of the direct sunlight. There’s a shady copse of pines not a 100 yards away, so he reels in his line and heads for that spot. He watches the ground as he goes, looking for dead squirrels, rats or any other rodent-like mammal that may suggest the plague is lurking in the stand of trees. He makes it through without even a hint of _anything_ living in the little patch of forest and calls it good. It really is eerily quiet out here and Sam represses a small shiver as he settles beneath the shade of a pine on a small bluff overlooking the lake.

Sam spaces out while he fishes, letting his line rest in the water while he reads the book he brought with him. Every now and then there’s a nibble, but he hasn’t caught a fish in about a half hour. He’s got four nice looking trout in his creel so far, but he’s hoping for at least a dozen or so. He turns a page and thinks maybe he needs to move again when there is a mighty tug on his line.

“Shit!” he says as he tightens his grip on the handle of his fishing rod just as there is another yank. Sam jerks back at the right moment and when he sees the line go wild in the water, he knows he’s hooked himself a big one.

“Woo-hoo!” he says around a laugh as he feeds out the line only to reel it back in. Sam likes fishing and he’s proven to be good at it. He’s a lot more patient than Dean or his dad. It’s something he does down at the creek behind their blue granite house as often as possible before the creek ices up in the wintertime. 

He feeds out more line, trying to tire his quarry a bit before reeling it all the way in, and shakes his head. He doesn’t like thinking about the house because it’s haunted and Sam’s pretty sure he’s the only one who knows it. He suspects the ghosts may have something to do with the hastily patched over spots on his bedroom wall by the closet, but he can’t be certain. He’s felt the rough places in the plaster often enough to have finally determined the quick fix job is hiding bullet holes, which is just creepy.

It’s even creepier what he’s seen outside his bedroom window on nights the moon is full and filling the side yard with its bright silver-blue shine. Sam’s never told Dean or his dad about the crying woman and the dead little boy she’s running with or about how she drops to her knees, body bowed over the child as she looks at something only she can see with a pleading expression on her face. After the fourth time he saw them, Sam stopped sleeping facing the window, but he’s never been able to forget and he knows they’re out there almost every night. It’s just that they’re easier to see when the moon is full.

His skin is crawling as the thoughts take him away, but he forces himself to be still and not itch at his cold feeling skin. Instead, he focuses his attention on his hands and trying to reel in his fish. It’s a fighter, but Sam’s getting it despite the unwanted thoughts of the ghost woman and her child barging in and pestering him.

Something breaking the surface of the lake about a mile out from where he’s at is what gets rid of the memories for good though. Sam watches as one dark grey-green hump roughly the size of a tractor tire rolls up out of the water and then another and another. He gasps and jerks himself backwards into the trunk of the tree and yanks his fish out of the water onto the shore in the process.

“What the hell?” he says so loudly his voice echoes out over the water. He can hear whatever it is moving through the depths, those humps rising and falling with soft splashes. It looks like it is moving toward where he’s at and Sam shakes his head.

“Nuh-uh,” he says under his breath as he stoops to collect his fish—it is a whopper, too—and throw it, still attached to the hook, into his creel. It tangles his line up, but Sam doesn’t care, he wants the fuck out of there and quick-like. He’s not done fishing, but he’s going to find higher—and therefore presumably safer—land to do it from that’s for damn sure.

He gathers up his things in a fumbling rush and glances over his shoulder as the last hump disappears beneath the water. The blue of the lake is broken in huge ripples that grow and fade outward every spot one of those eight, maybe ten, humps were. Sam doesn’t know what it was, he doesn’t want to know, but he sure as hell hopes he doesn’t hook that sonofabitch.

He goes back through the stand of pines and once on the other side he has to put his creel down to scratch his head, which is itching fiercely all of a sudden. He thinks it’s probably nerves as he picks his creel back up and heads off around the lake towards a higher bluff off to the west a bit. Behind him, a dead chipmunk lays on a pine bough, its eyes glazed and mouth bloody as the infected fleas on it jump ship in search of something else to bite.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They spend the night in Elmo, taking turns watching the fire and shooting any kind of rodent that may try to escape the flames. The few healthy inhabitants left before the Reapers were through laying fuses around town. Sam watched them go from his higher perch after seeing _whatever it was_ in the water.

About two hours after dawn of the next day they move out, leaving behind the smoking husks of the few buildings made of sturdy enough materials to stand. A dog’s body lays smoking in the middle of Main Street. Dean sees it during his turn at the watch near dawn and has to look away. Thankfully, Rufus comes to tell him they’re packing up to leave not long after.

Dean hightails it away from the ruins of Elmo and hopes he’s in time to rouse Sam before John gets to him. His ideal way of waking his sons is by throwing cold water on them, which starts a fight with Sam bright and early about half the time. Dean hates their screaming matches more than anything, but they’re particularly sucky first thing in the A.M. He’s too late though and Sam is sitting up on his cot, water dripping down his face by the time Dean gets back, but he’s not yelling at least.

“Morning,” Dean says.

Sam scowls at him from beneath his sodden bangs. “Hey,” he says after a second.

He grumbles something under his breath and rubs his temples before getting up to start packing his stuff. They’ve all got a long drive ahead of them, each and every one of them spreading out in a different direction, save Bobby and the Winchesters. Bobby’s own drive is twenty miles shorter than theirs though. Sam lets out a tired breath and makes himself stop thinking for a little while; it’s too early and he has a headache.

Sam, never a morning person to begin with, is groggy and uncommunicative on their way out of Elmo. After rummaging through the small stack of books Dean managed to find for him, he wads his jacket up to cradle his stiff feeling neck and twists himself around to rest his cheek on the back of the seat. He closes his eyes and wills his low, throbbing headache to go away as he starts to drift off, breathing in the smells of rosemary, peppermint and char.

It’s late when they make it back to Blue Shoe and later still by the time they get to the blue granite house. Dean wakes Sam with a vigorous shake and, “Rise and shine, Sammy!”

“God, _fuck off_ , Dean,” Sam says as he snaps awake with a wince. His head is pounding and he just generally feels like shit, achy and exhausted. His joints hurt, but he’s gotten kind of used to that since last summer when he started getting his height. The growing pains had been downright agonizing, to the point Dean had taken pity on him and rubbed him down with some kind of wintergreen scented liniment Bobby had made.

“Language, Sam,” Dean softly says, mimicking John right before his voice chimes in with the exact same thing.

That pulls a wan smile out of Sam, but then John adds, “Get your ass out of the car and help me and your brother unload this stuff. We don’t have all night, boy.”

“Asshole,” Sam mutters under his breath.

Dean’s light, warning touch on his elbow makes him sigh and feel bad as he levers himself out of the car. He knows Dean hates that they can’t get along and that he’s forever twisting himself into knots to try and keep Sam and John from each others throats. The older he’s gotten, the more Sam has come to realize just how often his brother puts himself between him and their dad. When he thinks about that, he cannot deny that it’s pretty fucked up and kind of sad that Dean feels he needs to do that. And yet, he can no more stop snapping at John than John can stop snarling at him.

Sam helps, but he’s slow and stiff with his movements, stumbling once or twice in the dark front yard. He feels like ass, but he doesn’t know specifically _what_ feels the worst. It’s a general feeling of malaise that has settled over him like a shroud. He got a lot of sun the day before and slept through the night breathing in stinking smoke whenever the wind shifted and he’s just _so tired_. He never does sleep well on those old fold-away cots John found in an Army surplus store a few years back. His legs hang off the end and if he tries to move to get his feet _on the cot_ then his head and shoulders slide off the other end. Mostly Sam lightly dozes, flat on his back with his feet resting on the ground. He may be able to reach the very highest of shelves now, but being tall still isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

When they’re done unloading the car, they all wash up, taking turns heating water over the big stone fireplace and filling the tub with it. Dean sees that he’s tired and lets Sam go before him and Sam is so thankful he can’t even find the words. His bath does little to perk him up and by the time he’s done washing, he’s half staggering around. He feels a little sick to his stomach, too, but chalks that up to not eating anything more than venison jerky all day. They’d had some yard eggs taken from a coop inside of town—and Bobby went back to his place with four clucking hens and an ornery old rooster in mesh carrying cages—but Sam hadn’t felt like eating.

The bottom line is that he seriously hopes he’s not coming down with the flu. Dean had it a couple of years back and that was scary, not as scary as the plague, but still scary. Then John had ended up with it and finally, they’d passed it on to Sam. He had felt pretty much like this when it was first setting in. Even though it’s summer now, getting the flu still isn’t unheard of and Sam figures that it would be his shitty luck to come down with that crap again. Getting sick nowadays, with very few doctors around and even less medicine aside from what they’ve stockpiled, is no laughing matter.

He falls into bed with a groan and barely hears the protesting squeal of the old springs before he’s asleep again. A little while later, Dean comes in and covers Sam up after a quick look into his room shows Sam lying there practically face down in his pillow and shivering.

“You coddle him,” John says from his bedroom doorway where he’s stood and watched Dean.

Dean freezes like he’s been caught in an act of thievery and looks down at the floor. “He looked cold,” he says.

“Sam’s old enough to cover himself up if he’s cold, Dean,” John says. 

He’s not doing it to be mean, he’s only trying to tell Dean this for his own good. By the set of Dean’s shoulders and the way he’s shifting lightly on his feet, John also knows he isn’t taking it that way. Both of his kids think he’s a total bastard and it kills John to know it, but Dean will at least listen to him. He even respects him. On the other hand, John’s pretty sure Sam’s only a couple of years away from working up the nerve to spit in his face.

“Yes, sir,” Dean says. He doesn’t sound the least bit convinced.

John sighs and scrubs his hand over his face in tired frustration. This has been going on for too many years now and Dean’s mothering of Sam shows no sign of letting up. “I’m not saying you can’t look out for him or take care of him if he needs help, son, but you can’t keep babying him this way. It makes him weak.”

John’s deep, dark secret opinion on the matter is that it’s mostly too late anyway. Dean’s mollycoddling of Sam has made him too dependent to truly be strong. John should’ve put a stop to it when they were both little. In a way, Dean’s need to look after Sam has also made him weak. They work together incredibly well, that much good has come of it. John has no doubt Sam would do as much for Dean as he does for him if Dean would _let_ him. It’s made them reliant on one another in a way that’s almost _too_ reliant though; in a way that’s more like codependency than teamwork.

“Sam’s not weak, sir,” Dean says. For that he’ll pick his head up and meet his father’s shadowed eyes.

“He is and if you keep on, you will be, too,” John says. “If you’re not already.” It’s a low blow, about the lowest blow he could think of, but it will hopefully serve to get Dean to cut the apron strings he has Sam swaddled in.

Dean flinches from the words and then swallows hard. “Sir?” he asks.

John backs further into the darkness of his bedroom to hide his twisted expression, part frown, part grimace of shame. “Go to bed, Dean,” he forces himself to say before shutting his bedroom door.

He can feel Dean’s wide, hurt eyes following him anyway. He lays down with a heavy sigh and rolls over. Even if his boys both end up hating him, he still prays they’ll live. Everything he’s ever done, no matter how harsh or cruel it may have seemed, has been an effort to try and guarantee that. This last thing is going to be the hardest, but John isn’t one to shy from a challenge either. Now that he’s thrown down the gauntlet, all he can do is move forward.

He’s almost asleep when he hears Dean creeping back down the hall, likely to check on Sam once more before he turns in. John grits his teeth in irritation, but is at least glad they stopped sleeping in the bed together. Even though it had taken him threatening to chain them to their respective beds to make them quit. He listens to the soft, tell-tale squeak of the board right outside his door as Dean slinks by again and thinks that this needs to stop, too.

John plumps his pillow and wills Dean to stay in bed this time. If he gets up again, he’s going to beat his damn ass and that’s all there is to it. Learning has to start somewhere, after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sometime in the wee hours while the sun still slumbers below the horizon, Sam rolls over in his sleep. He comes awake with a choked off cry of pain as he sits up in bed. The world spins around him in the disorienting blackness of his room and he falls back against his pillow with a heaving breath. The left side of his head, behind his ear, feels like there’s a red-hot coal filled with stinging wasps there. He is soaked through with sweat in big, sopping patches and burning up on the outside, but cold as ice inside, all the way down into his joints that are screaming with pain. He feels woozy, confused and shaking his head does nothing to help that. The pain flaring anew from behind his ear actually does though.

He remembers not feeling well all day and going to sleep thinking he had the flu. His stomach turns and fills with squirming, insectile pangs of worry when he thinks about this new pain, the one behind his ear. Sam’s afraid to feel, to find out for sure, because he thinks he knows already.

His hand is shaking when he finally works up the nerve to check. When he feels the small, smooth lump just behind his ear, he moans low in the back of his throat with fear and pain. It’s got him at last. He doesn’t know how, but he knows it had to have happened back in Elmo. He didn’t _see_ anything, so even though he felt like hell yesterday, he never thought it was the plague.

He’s not coughing and that’s a good sign. The coughing plague has always scared Sam more than even the septicemic variety. The idea of coughing up wads of blood so thick that it’s possible to strangle on them or drown is somehow worse than rotting from the inside out while still alive. It also means that if he isn’t coughing then he’s not contagious—yet. Bubonic plague is tricky; it can turn into pneumonic plague if the conditions are right. The recollection makes Sam bite his trembling lip against another moan of fear.

He’s weeping and barely even aware of it as he tries to think, but his mind feels too cottony for much to process very well. The question, as always, asks itself though: _Boy, why are you crying?_ The answer is: _Because I’m scared._ He’s certain of one thing—the second John finds out he’s sick, he’s going to put a bullet in his head. Euthanization is the new standard of mercy for most plague sufferers and it _is_ merciful, but Sam doesn’t want a bullet in the head either.

Fever addled and confused, he fights his way free of his blankets and gets to his feet. He sways and totters a couple of steps sideways, but manages to right himself. He’s not quite so sick yet that he can no longer walk, but that window is a narrow one and he needs to get out of the house before John finds him. He doesn’t want Dean to see him like this either, all it’ll do is upset him and Sam really hates to make Dean sad.

Sam thinks he’ll go out into the woods and lay down between the two slightly sunken irregular rectangles about two miles out—if he can make it that far. He figured out a long time ago that that’s where the woman and little boy are buried. They were murdered, Sam has no doubt about that and that place is like the property’s own sad old cemetery. He feels like maybe that’s where he belongs, out there on the ground with the old inhabitants of this blue granite death house.

His brilliant plan is most soundly foiled when he staggers out into the hall at long last to find Dean walking towards him. “What’re you doing?” Dean whispers. “You’re stomping around like an elephant, dude. Be quiet or you’ll wake Dad.”

“Dean,” Sam croaks as he slumps against the doorframe of his room. His knees wobble and threaten to give. He would’ve made it no more than ten or twelve feet, let alone two miles. It was pure stubbornness that got him this far.

“Shit, Sam,” Dean says. He moves to grab Sam’s arms and feels the heat radiating from his brother. He smells the sick-sweat on him. “Sammy?” he asks as worried panic begins to curl around his heart like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

“Don’t let Dad shoot me, okay?” Sam says. His voice is a raw whisper, but the quavering fear in it is unmistakable.

“Why would Dad shoot you?” Dean asks as he leads Sam back to bed, mostly dragging him even though he’s trying to help. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t want to believe.

“I’m sick, idiot,” Sam mutters. Then he retches and pukes all over his nightstand.

“Okay, okay,” Dean says as he holds him up even though Sam weighs a ton. He looks skinny, but that’s only because he’s so fucking tall.

“Please, Dean,” Sam begs him around a mouthful of slobbery bile. He’s shaking and openly crying again. It kills Dean to hear him like this, it kills him even more to know that Sam’s _sick_ , that he’s got _it_.

“I swear, Sammy,” Dean tells him.

He means it, too, he won’t let John shoot Sam because he will not believe that Sam is going to die. Dean refuses to acknowledge that he’s powerless against the plague, all the pilfered vitamins and fresh, organic milk in the world will not save him from this shit if it wants to take him.

“I don’t wanna die,” Sam mutters as Dean lays him down in bed.

“Shut up,” Dean snaps at him even as he fusses with Sam’s blankets before stopping to wipe his messy face with the tail of his shirt. “You’re not gonna die, so just… yeah… _shut up_.”

It’ll be light soon and if they haven’t woken John, the sunrise will. He's up and moving half the time before most of the birds are even awake. Dean looks down at his brother, who has already slipped into an uneasy sleep, tossing his head and making sharp, low sounds of pain every time he turns it too far to the left.

Dean gently smoothes Sam’s sweaty hair back from his forehead then sits on the edge of the bed to try and think. He has a very serious decision to make before the sun comes up.

~*~*~*~*~*~

John is awakened by the sound of vomiting coming from Sam’s room. The veil of sleep and yesterday’s exhaustion fall away from him the second he opens his eyes to the misty grey dawn light oozing around the edges of his bedroom curtains. He hears Dean’s voice saying, “It’s okay, Sammy, it’s okay, just try to drink a little water, please.”

On cat-quiet stocking feet, John gets out of bed and slips from his room and down the hall to Sam’s. Unlike Dean, he’s learned and memorized the location of each creaking floorboard and moves without even a faint squeak to give him away. Sam’s bedroom door is open a crack and John widens the gap with a light push of the tip of his index finger. 

What opens up before him is a scene where Dean is leaning over Sam and holding a cup to his lips. The room smells of sickness; of vomit, sweat and urine. John’s stomach twists unpleasantly. Not because of the smells themselves, but because of the familiarity of them.

“What’s going on Dean?” John says.

Dean jumps and whirls around to look at his father. He’s ghost-grey in the dim morning light, eyes as big and shiny as glass marbles. He’s tense, on edge and more afraid than John has ever seen him.

“Sam’s sick, Dad,” Dean tells him. John watches the shadows on his throat slide and bob when he swallows. “He’s… he’s got _it_.” Dean’s face threatens to crumple, but he clears his throat and makes himself meet John’s eyes.

John’s heart stops dead in his chest at that one word. _It_. No one needs to clarify what _it_ is anymore. He almost stumbles under the weight of that miniscule syllable, but he locks his knees and straightens his spine.

“Is he coughing?” John forces himself to ask.

“No, sir,” Dean says.

“Turning black?”

“No, sir,” Dean says again. He shakes his head to punctuate it.

If he isn’t coughing then that means Sam isn’t contagious, at least not through person-to-person contact and if he hasn’t already started to blacken then he won’t. Coughing is still a possibility though. John moves his head to the side to look around Dean, who is once more shielding Sam with his own body. The glimpse he gets of his youngest is a bad one. He’s sick, waxy white even in the pale light of dawn and the flickering warm orange of the kerosene lamp on the opposite nightstand. He’s shining with sweat and breathing harshly through his mouth. His eyes are closed, but restless beneath their lids. John is watching his baby boy die and when his heart starts to beat again, it only does it in order to shatter better.

They can’t stay here with Sam and it hurts more than he could ever begin to explain to realize it. He can still save Dean though, he can do that much, he can be a good father and keep one of his children alive.

He should shoot Sam, it would be sparing him the agony of lingering with the bubonic plague for a week or more. The idea makes him want to scream though. The mental image of his son’s brains flying out of his head in a spray of blood and bone made chunky by the soft pink-grey tissue in it is horrifying. He can no more shoot Sam than he could burn Dean. It was hard doing it to strangers, at least at first, but that has gotten easier with repetition. It’s different when he’s looking at his own flesh and blood and picturing it in his mind.

He’s never allowed himself to think about what he would do if either of them got sick. Acknowledging it as a possibility wasn’t an option and now here it is, right in front of him. Sam is shaking with fever chills and moaning in his restless sleep, and it’s killing John to watch him die. He wants to stay with him, to take care of him, but he can no more do that than he can shoot him. To do so would only spell death for him and Dean.

It’s the hardest decision John has ever had to make, but he does it in only a minute’s time. While it may be hard, he can’t afford the luxury of devoting hours to thinking about it either.

“Come away from him, Dean,” John tells him.

Dean shakes his head. “No.” His voice comes out a cracked whisper.

“We can’t stay here,” John tells him. “I need you to go pack some things and then we need to go. There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

“No,” Dean repeats. His voice is stronger now. “He’s not going to die.”

John swallows down the lump in his throat. “Yes, he is, son and you know it.”

“I don’t _know_ anything,” Dean says. His expression has melted from that of a scared young man to something hard and unreadable. “I can’t just leave him here. I _won’t_. He’s my brother and he needs me.”

“Dean!” John snaps at him. “Don’t be stupid! He’s going to die. You know it as well as I do and every second we stand here arguing about it is the second he could start to cough. Almost all of them do and you know that, too. If he does then we’re _all_ dead. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Dean says. “I’m still not going to leave him.”

John’s through trying to reason with him, he won’t leave Dean here to die because of his loyalty to Sam. He thinks again how much he hates this, hates what he’s doing—what he _has_ to do. But he has no other options either. Hasn’t had for a long time and right now in particular. John’s life is about _musts_ , not _want tos_. So, he goes into Sam’s room with the intention of grabbing Dean and dragging him out of there by force.

When he comes at Dean, Dean backpedals into the side of Sam’s bed. He slaps his hand out to feel beneath the edge of the blanket and grab what he hid there after coming to his decision. There’s a voice in the back of his mind that asks, _Are you really going to do this?_

Dean’s answer is, “Yes,” as he levels the gun at his father’s head. His hands aren’t shaking, but his insides are. Oh, God, he feels sick with this, but he won’t let John take him away from Sam so they can leave him here to die helpless and alone. 

“Get away from us,” Dean says. “Go, if that’s what you’re going to do, but leave us alone, Dad.”

“Dean,” John says. He’s stopped halfway across the room, staring down the barrel of the gun. Dean’s finger is on the trigger and there’s a fierce light in his scared eyes. “Put the gun down.”

“No, sir, I can’t do that,” Dean says. A few tears, quick as thieves, streak down his cheeks. He blinks them away and meets John’s eyes. “You go, but I’m staying. I’m tired of repeating myself.”

“Dean, this is suicide, don’t you get that? If you stay then I’ll lo— Both of you are going to _die_ ,” John says. “Is that what you want?”

“No, sir, I don’t want that, but if that’s the way it has to be then okay,” Dean tells him.

He knows as well as John does that Sam could start coughing any minute now and if that happens, Dean can kiss his ass goodbye. He doesn’t care though. He’s spent most of his life doing for Sam, taking care of him and making sure he was okay. Sam is his life and if Sam goes then there’s not much reason in living that Dean can see. John has said it’s unhealthy before and he’s right. Dean isn’t stupid, he knows. Knowing it and being able to make it stop are different things though.

“ _Dean!_ ” John screams it at him so loudly that Dean jumps and Sam’s wild, bloodshot eyes pop open. He mutters nonsense under his breath and claws at the side of his neck with crazed fingers that do what they will.

Dean draws back the hammer on the gun; it’s a double action and cocking it is unnecessary, but John taught them both how that sound could be a great motivator. “You need to go, Dad,” Dean tells him. “Now, okay? While it’s still safe. Please, just go.”

John stands there, frozen in time and being swallowed by his welling grief as he looks between his two sons. He loves them both more than he has ever been able to tell them—another luxury he feels like he cannot afford—but this is their fight now. Even though he doesn’t want it to be, he’s been pushed out of the picture and absolved of his responsibility to them both without having any say in the matter. He doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t want to leave his children to die, but from this he cannot save them.

In the end, he walks out of the room on feet made of lead, packs a bag and walks away. One last glance at Sam’s bedroom door shows it is shut now and undoubtedly locked to keep him out. He could go around to the window, find a spot in the woods and shoot them both from there with his rifle, but he knows he won’t.

John cranks the Impala and drives away into the golden glow of a brand new day and five miles down the road, he pulls over when the shakes finally hit him. His bones feel like they are turning to dust in his grief. He’s just lost everything he had left and now he doesn’t know what to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

By the second day, Dean knows John isn’t coming back (although a tiny part of him still hopes) and he’s glad. He wants their dad to be safe and healthy. Yet, he also never knew how abandoned and left alone this could make him feel. Between Sam being sick and their dad being gone, Dean’s walking on a peninsula made of pins and needles called Wit’s End. He’s stressed out and terrified all the way down to his bones, every minute of every day spent wondering if now is the time Sam will begin to cough or if the next instant will be the last. One more shuddering, labored breath and then no more Sam.

He combats all of that by tending to Sam like it’s a religion. He cleans him, turns him, sponges him off and forces tiny trickles of water past Sam’s cracked lips. He talks to Sam when he’s run out of anything else to do, and when he runs out of things to say, he reads to him. He reads a romance novel called _A Knight in Shining Armor_ and a thriller called _The Treehouse_. There’s a biography on Calvin Coolidge and a collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath. He reads articles from _Cosmo_ and _Good Housekeeping_ and _Popular Mechanics_. Dean’s voice is a raw husk from all the noise he’s making to try and keep himself calm and to soothe his miserable brother.

In the night, he listens to the bubo behind Sam’s ear gurgle and blub as it grows. When he finally found it, it was no bigger than an almond near the bottom of Sam’s ear. Now it’s the size of a hen egg, pushing out the side of Sam’s head and making him look deformed as it heaves and babbles away beneath his hair. It makes Dean’s skin crawl as he listens to the sounds it makes. Drowning out that noise is just one more reason he reads aloud or sings or chatters incessantly.

He hopes it doesn’t rupture, he’s heard tale of some that have from other Reapers. They leave big, torn holes in sick flesh and splashes of stinking ooze and blood all over the place. Sam’s is in a peculiar place and the limited space it has means it may well blow out. The more Dean thinks about that, the more he thinks about draining it. They have syringes for some of the medicines they’ve pilfered, mostly high-end painkillers and intravenous antibiotics. Dean watches the lump on the side of Sam’s head and thinks about shoving a needle in there to draw out some of the nastiness before it blows with a wet pop. He can’t cut it open, that’s risking secondary infection because the buboes are filled to the brim with active plague bacilli. Bobby taught them that. Dean’s glad to have the knowledge now because if he didn’t, he’d have caved and cut the thing open the second he heard it make a sound.

By late evening of the third day, Dean is still trying to make up his mind about what to do when the cartilage in the tip of Sam’s ear breaks from the pressure. The bubo has forced his ear out and over on itself steadily since it began to really grow, but Dean didn’t think it would do that. How stupid he was, of course it could do that if it had potential to rupture—and it does. The cartilage makes a sound like a shoe going through a thin crust of ice and Sam whimpers in pain, twitching in his bed to try and get away from it. The damned thing is a constant source of agony for him and now it’s gone and broke the top of his ear, too. That finally makes up Dean’s mind to drain it, once and for all. He gets out of his chair then to gather more kerosene lamps and a few candles to combat the fading daylight then goes to get a syringe and some gloves. 

Dean sits on top of Sam to pin him down after he shoots him up with some morphine. In the light cast by a dozen kerosene lamps and two dozen more candles, he sticks a needle into the center of the lump behind his brother’s ear. Sam thrashes and screams, eyes flying wide and seeing nothing as Dean clamps his knees harder around his ribcage.

He mutters, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” as he pulls back the plunger and begins to draw the dark ooze out of Sam’s head.

When he’s done, Sam is crying even in his delirium and Dean feels damn close to doing the same. It’s taken four times to drain the thing and it’s still not totally gone. He swipes over the puncture site with alcohol after holding the tip of the syringe inside the flame of a candle until it glowed orange-red with heat. The gunk from the bubo floats in sickly globs inside a pot full of bleach and rubbing alcohol, the fumes of which are making Dean feel a bit lightheaded. He tosses the dirty needle into the pot as well then puts the lid on it, takes it outside and carefully removes the lid after putting it down. Standing back, Dean takes out his Zippo and a twisted wad of magazine pages, lights them and tosses them in the pot.

He stands outside in the cool summer night air and watches Sam’s plague burn up. Never in his life has he felt so vindicated after torching something.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The fourth day brings a new surprise, a spike in Sam’s fever that causes him to have a small seizure. It scares Dean all over again and nothing he does lowers Sam’s temperature. He paces around the bedroom until an idea at last occurs to him. He drags Sam out of bed, using his bedclothes as a makeshift litter and takes him down to the creek that runs behind the house.

The water is cold even in high summer and as Dean strips Sam down to his underwear, his inner televangelist is screaming in his head. _Wash him in the waters and make him clean!_ This whole thing is driving Dean to the brink of madness, he can feel it waiting for him just around the bend, but he holds on. He _has_ to hold on, for Sam and for himself.

The water is freezing and even sick, Sam thrashes and fights. Dean just sits down in the water, wraps his legs around Sam and presses his chest to his burning back as he holds his arms.

“Come on, Sam, _come on_ ,” Dean whispers in his ear over and over as he holds him in the icy water, letting it run over them both until Dean thinks his lips must be blue.

Sam’s fever begins to slack off and finally it retreats back to what it was, maybe even less. Dean sits there with him a little while longer. His relief has left him boneless and his tired worry has left him vulnerable. He sobs into Sam’s sweat-matted hair with just enough of his usual sense about him to be glad Sam’s too out of it to notice.

It’s late into the fifth day or early into the sixth, depending on how you want to look at it, and Dean is dozing in his chair by Sam’s bedside when he hears, “Dean, what’re you doing?” The voice is faint, soft, but _there_.

Dean jerks awake so suddenly he pulls something in his neck, but barely feels the twinge. Across from him, Sam is watching him with dark-ringed eyes made dull by sickness, but he’s talking. He’s looking at Dean and as Dean leans forward, a grin so big it hurts spreads across his face.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says as he slides out of the chair to go sit beside him on the bed.

He pushes Sam’s tumbled, greasy hair back and looks at the flopped over tip of his broken ear then he says to hell with it and leans over to hug Sam. He’s so fucking happy he could scream. He knew the plague wouldn’t be able to take Sam. He just knew it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The first few months after Sam wakes up are tense and dragging. He’s weak and shaky, only able to get out of bed with Dean’s help around the end of the first two weeks. It’s all up to Dean to make sure he’s comfortable, clean and in fresh clothes. Sam’s embarrassment is palpable and to try and curb it, Dean resumes his constant stream of chatter again, this time to keep Sam distracted while his big brother dresses him. He feels for Sam, he really does, the way Sam lies in bed with his tired eyes squinched closed, hair damp from the wipe down Dean gave it before dressing him makes Dean want to hug him and tell him it’s alright. The fact that Sam almost died, that Dean came _thisclose_ to nearly losing him for good, hangs in the air like a balloon filled with noxious gas. Like he thought the morning he fought with John about Sam: Dean knows he could not have survived that.

When Sam’s sleeping—which he does a lot of the first few weeks—Dean takes careful stock of their dwindling supplies and tries to convince himself they will _not_ starve to death. He could go out and hunt or fish, but the idea of leaving Sam alone when he still can’t make it down the hall without assistance leaves the now-familiar kitten of panic batting coyly at his heart with its little needle-sharp claws. He just feeds Sam half of his share of the food instead and ignores the grumbling of his own belly. 

One afternoon, after a sad lunch of soup and dried elk meat, Dean studies Sam’s profile through his fallen hair while he reads a book about Ulysses S. Grant. His hair’s gotten so much longer since he got sick that it could probably stand a trim. Dean doesn’t want to cut it though because one; Sam would bitch (he always does) and two; if he does that then the flopped over tip of his broken ear will show.

That’s a bad, bad thing because it marks Sam as a survivor and being a survivor is no longer something people hold onto with hope that they, too, may survive should they get sick. Survivors are maligned now, viewed as _carriers_ of the plague the way a raccoon can be a carrier of rabies. The plague, they learned from Bobby, doesn’t leave survivors with permanent immunity like chicken pox does, but it does leave a _temporary_ immunity. It’s an immunity that lasts long enough for a survivor to chug right along while everyone around them drops dead. A superstitious fear has risen up around such people now and they’re exiled, viewed with frightened suspicion and in some cases, they are even murdered. The Reapers and a few others know the real truth, but it’s a sad case of the (sometimes willful) ignorance of the many outweighing the knowledge of the few.

Because of that Dean thinks Sam should grow his hair out as long as he wants to. Hell, he can let it grow down to his knees if that’s how he likes it and Dean will never say a word about it to him. Sam’s long hippie hair may be the very thing that saves his life one day. Now to just make him quit tipping his head slightly to the right. It’s another tell, like the limp some people get if the bubo is on their inner thigh or groin or the way they walk with one arm slightly out to their side if they’ve had one in the armpit. The reaction is a learned one that lasts long after—maybe forever after—the bubo itself is gone. The body remembers the pain so acutely that it never seems to completely trust in its absence again.

It’s only when Sam says, “Dude, _what_?” that Dean realizes he’s noticed his staring and is now watching him back through his bangs. Dean wants to push his hair out of his face and tell him he’ll end up half blind if he keeps doing that, but he resists the urge. His head is tipped slightly to the right though and about that, Dean will say something—he kind of _needs_ to so Sam (and Sam’s body) can be convinced the bubo really is gone now and can’t hurt anymore.

“Don’t cock your head like that,” Dean says. “It makes you look like a confused dog.”

“Eat me,” Sam snaps back, but he forces his head back with slow carefulness, face tense in expectation of pain. He holds it even if he does seem uncomfortable with it, unsure and mistrusting all at the same time.

“You know why you can’t do that,” Dean says.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says. He’s already started tipping his head to the right again though and with an annoyed grunt, forces it back straight. Sam turns a page in his book and sits quietly for a minute, reading, but also thinking. “Dean, you need to go hunt. We’re running out of food and starving yourself to feed me is stupid.”

“Hey!” Dean snaps.

“Well, it is,” Sam says. He closes his book and lays it down on his nightstand with all the others stacked there. “You think I don’t notice, but I do and besides, even if I didn’t notice _that_ , I’d still be able to hear your stomach. Go hunt or something because we need food. I’d go with you, but…”

He trails off and looks frustrated as he shifts in his bed with a touch of shame. Dean would have to half haul him out into the woods and would need to carry him back home, most likely. He can’t hold out to do much at all right now and he really wouldn’t mind fishing some. He would like some fresh air. Then it occurs to him that _maybe_ …

“Look, help me down to the creek, bring a chair or something and I’ll fish while you hunt,” Sam offers. “We can do that, no problem.”

“No,” Dean says almost immediately. “It may take me hours to find a deer and then even longer to tow it back here. No damned way am I leaving you sitting down at the creek for who knows how long while I do that.”

“ _Dean_ , we have to do _something_ ,” Sam slaps his hands down on his bedspread in frustration and gives him a pleading look. “I’m not totally helpless and I need to do something useful. I want to help, so _let me_.”

“No, Sam and that’s that,” Dean says as he stands up, meaning to go putter around in the living room where Sam can’t follow him. “We’ll work this out. I’ll go fishing tomorrow or something.”

“And you won’t catch a thing because you fidget and you’re impatient with it,” Sam counters.

“I said we’re done talking about it,” Dean says. Then he walks out of the room with Sam’s glare digging holes into his shoulders.

Of course, when dealing with Sam who has most mules beaten in the stubborn department, they aren’t at all finished with the conversation regardless of what Dean says on the matter. It takes him two and half days, but by early morning of the third day, Sam is left sitting under the shade of a spruce tree in an armchair out of the living room with a pile of books, some water and jerky, his fishing pole and a smug grin. Dean leaves him there with serious misgivings and tromps off into the woods muttering curses under his breath as he goes. The clenching pangs of hunger in his stomach egg him on though and he trails deeper into the forest, following his gut’s insistence.

The sun is almost completely down by the time Dean comes out of the woods again, panting and covered in sweat, scratched all to hell from briars with burrs stuck all over his clothes. He’s dragging a decent sized mule deer along behind him though. His arms and back ache from the effort of the work, but he did it, by fucking God and now they can eat their fill tonight. As soon as they get the cumbersome sonofabitch dressed out anyway, but they can do that, sure they can.

Sam is asleep in his armchair, line lazily bobbing in the water and a book lying on the ground at his feet. There’s another line staked into the ground off to the side and a quick look shows him eight good sized brook trout and one decent looking perch in the water, strung through the gills with a stringer. The fish will keep better than the deer, so Dean gently shakes Sam awake and ignores the way his hands are shaking.

“Hey,” Sam says as he blinks up at Dean. He looks around and sees the deer laying a couple of feet behind Dean and smiles. “Told ya you could do it.”

“I never had any doubts,” Dean says. He shifts his weight on his aching feet and arms sticky, dirty sweat off his forehead. “You ah… You feel like maybe you could help me dress this thing out though?”

Dean’s the better shot of the two, but when it comes to knife work, Sam’s got him beat hands down. He’s damned good, almost creepily good, with a knife, just like Dean’s probably a good enough shot to make a fine sniper if he ever had need of it.

“Sure,” Sam says. He sounds sure, too, but he doesn’t totally look it. He rubs at his face and yawns again. “Go string it up for me though. I can’t… I mean, I don’t think I can lift it.”

“Okay,” Dean says easily.

He walks back to the deer, grabs it by its forelegs and starts towing it back toward the shed where they do their butchering. His breath huffs and wheezes out of him as he goes. It’s been a long day and he’s bone tired. He bagged the deer around noon, but pulling it back out of the woods is what’s taken him so long. The thing’s heavy and he’s only one man. He had to stop and rest and a couple of times he came close to just taking a leg off the deer and leaving the rest. _You keep what you kill,_ Bobby’s voice kept reminding him every time he thought that and so, Dean had soldiered on despite the pain in his back and shoulders. Winchesters aren’t quitters and honestly, he’s pretty damned proud of himself.

They get the deer dressed out between the two of them. Dean has to take the knife and work on it some when Sam tires out and needs to catch his breath. He tells Dean where to cut when he falters, confused about anatomy and how it all works. Sam’s the science geek—and just a geek in general—but Dean does alright, too. Sometimes he does wish he’d paid more attention back when Bobby was giving them lessons. When Sam reads to him now though, Dean does listen, so he’s making up for it.

It takes longer than usual, way longer, but by about nine that night they’re done and it’s time to eat. Dean’s filthy and whipped with exhaustion, hurting so bad he feels eighty instead of twenty, but he takes a piece of the back strap in and throws it in a skillet with some garlic, salt and rosemary to season it. It won’t be the best thing he’s ever cooked, but it will be edible and that is honest-to-fuck what counts the most right now. The rest of the deer is packed down and snugged away and will keep fine in the cold mountain night air, but he’s going to need to get up bright and early tomorrow to start smoking some and salting down the rest. It’s a tedious task, but it keeps the meat fit for them to eat and they need that more than Dean needs to worry about how damned bad he hurts.

Once the deer is sizzling away in the skillet, Dean stumbles away from the stove. He’s got deer blood all over him on top of all the other filth and he _reeks_. Washing is of utmost importance these days, something that was once deemed a necessity has become something of a survival mechanism now. People are clean freaks, willing to bathe in icy ponds and streams in the dead of winter if they don’t have a way to heat water. Sam and Dean are no different and that’s one more reason Sam has willingly suffered the indignity of Dean bathing him while he’s recovering.

“Can you watch this while I go wash up? I’ll set some water to heat for you when I’m done,” Dean says.

“Okay,” Sam says. “Hey, do we have any potatoes left?”

“Yeah, like four, why?”

“I was thinking I could put them on to boil, maybe do some mashed,” Sam says. “With garlic, if you want. I take we’re out of butter?”

“Uh-huh, been out and I haven’t had the time—or interest—to milk Bessie to churn more,” Dean says. He hates churning butter, it’s boring and time consuming as hell, but butter… mmm… butter. He realizes he needs to milk the damned cow anyway and adds that to his list of things to do tomorrow after he tends to the deer meat.

“Okay,” Sam says again as he makes his slow way to the pantry where the potatoes are. He’s moving a little better this evening than he has in a long while and Dean thinks maybe the sunshine and fresh air did him some good after all. 

“You good?” he asks just in case.

“ _Yes_ , Dean, now go bathe,” Sam says. He looks at him over his shoulder, eyebrows raised with impatience. “You stink and so do I so, ya know, sometime this century.”

“Bitchy,” Dean mutters as he hobbles off.

While Dean washes up, Sam sits at the table to peel the potatoes and chop the garlic to mash into them when they’re done. Its pungent smell is so strong it almost makes his eyes water, but he blinks and carries on. Garlic is another of Bobby’s natural remedy finds. Apparently garlic makes blood taste unpalatable to fleas and other parasites. In fact, the smell of it on someone’s skin may be enough to deter them from biting. Because of that, whether it’s true or not, they all eat a lot of garlic. Sam’s living proof that garlic doesn’t always—if ever—work and it’s just pure luck he’s even alive at all. 

Sam likes garlic though, but it does make for hellaciously bad breath. He thinks that one day he may very much like to try his hand at kissing a girl (or guy, but he keeps quiet about that part) should the opportunity present itself. He’s got a new lease on life and all that jazz, so he’s hoping like hell to get that chance. He’s already decided that if it ever looks like it may happen then he’s going to quit eating garlic for a while. Either that or he’s going to make sure the other person eats garlic, too. He learned that from one of the old _Cosmopolitan_ magazines that Dean brought him for a while until John inquired as to why they were sitting around reading that “girly shit.”

Sam still has a stack of them in his bedroom closet and while Dean no longer read them where John could see, Sam has noticed a few of his issues missing. He doesn’t know if Dean read the articles or looked at the pictures of all the pretty models in their haute couture clothes, but Sam can’t blame him for either one. Although, if it’s the latter that Dean is interested in then Sam damn sure doesn’t _ever_ want those magazines back. He knows what happens when a young man looks at pictures of pretty women for too long. Sam’s just not as messy as Dean is.

He coughs softly in embarrassment at even thinking about that and finishes up with the garlic about the time he hears the familiar bubble of water boiling.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After they’ve eaten supper and Sam’s washed up, they sit in the living room for a bit, Sam curled up on one end of the couch under the old quilt they took from the house in Lawrence. Dean sits at the other end of the sofa, staring out the window across from him and tries to ignore the way his hurting muscles tremble and shake. It’s only now that he’s stopped moving in earnest and is trying to relax that he’s feeling it full force. It’s all he can do not to groan in pain every time he shifts his position a little bit.

Eventually, he gets lost in a daydream that’s become as familiar as the back of his hand. Even though, in many ways, he’s come to accept that John’s never coming back for them, Dean can’t help but indulge in the little fantasy he has created. It started out small, but it’s become large and all-engrossing; something he could get lost in for hours if he let himself. He imagines that their dad does come back, if for no other reason than to bury their bodies. After all, how could he leave his sons to rot with a clear conscience? There’s a part of Dean that just can’t accept that although the other, larger part has resigned itself to the fact that is exactly what John has done. He tries to ignore that part, however, because it leads down the path to hating John and he _loves_ their dad and so, does not want to hate him.

In his daydream though, John comes back to the house and he looks sad, tired, but resigned; a look Dean has seen on his father’s face in unguarded moments and filed away for some reason. Maybe because it made him seem more reachable, made him seem like a… like a… _person_ , not the hard-eyed, hard-assed man Sam and Dean grew to know after the plague. When John walks into the house, expecting the worst, his expression will change to surprised disbelief when he finds Sam and Dean sitting on the sofa together, like they’ve been waiting all along. His expression will melt from surprised disbelief to hope and finally, _finally_ , his expression will read as joyful—not a look Dean’s seen on the man’s face since he was about six, he thinks. It’ll be there this time though. Oh yes, it most definitely will be.

 _Boys!_ he will cry in his joy and he will go to them where they’ve risen to stand expectantly, hopefully, before him. Then John will hug them and say that he’s sorry for ever leaving them there, he’ll ask them to forgive him. Sam will be reluctant, but he will nod and Dean will, too. Then Dean will hug John again, valiantly fighting back his own tears (and okay, maybe he’s listened more attentively to Sam’s reading of cheesy melodrama novels more than he cares to admit). He will still do it because Dean thinks that he really would almost cry if he saw their dad again. As he hugs John, he will fiercely whisper in his ear, _I told you Sammy wouldn’t die._

It’s a nice daydream for sure, but what really happens is that everyday John’s absence kicks another bruise into Dean’s heart. He busies himself with helping Sam, but if this evening is any sign, he won’t even have that to distract himself with for much longer. Then he will be left with nothing to do but poke at those bruises in the small hours of the morning, the drawn-out hours of the afternoon and the dark, cold hours of the night. He’s seen the spark of resentment in Sam’s eyes, a spark that’s been there for years, burst into a bonfire of hatred so intense it’s downright chilling. He hadn’t wanted to tell Sam about John leaving, but he’d had to and he had also told him _why_ , about how he had made his decision that morning before John got up. He’s tried to explain to Sam that it is not Dad’s fault, but Sam only gives him a flat, blank look that suggests he thinks that is complete bullshit.

Dean shifts on the sofa again, looking for a comfortable position that doesn’t seem to exist right now when Sam says, “He’s never coming back, Dean.” Sam’s voice is soft, still a little hoarse from being sick even though it’s going on two months now. The plague may have left him, but it took its pound of flesh from Sam while it was there, that’s for sure. 

That softly hoarse voice is jarring to Dean. Sam may as well have screamed it at him. He glances away from the window where he was quietly, secretly (he thought) looking for headlights and listening for the familiar-as-home rumble of the Impala’s engine, to meet Sam’s calm hazel eyes. He holds his gaze for a moment before he looks away again.

He doesn’t answer Sam, although he can feel Sam’s eyes on him, searching and concerned, until Sam sighs and looks away. Dean feels that look go even though he doesn’t see it and still, he sits thinking and staring. Over an hour later, Dean shakes his already aching body, looks at Sam again and says, “I know.” The words are heavy on his tongue, falling like stones to clatter onto the floor at his feet.

Sam nods once and looks right back at Dean, a frown pulling a crease between his eyebrows as he does. Dean’s shaking, exhaustion, pain and now welling emotions, making it visible even in the light of the kerosene lamps.

“Dean,” Sam says as he lays his book aside. “How bad did you hurt yourself dragging that deer out?”

“I’m fine,” Dean says. The words are as automatic as breathing to him. “You ready for bed?”

Sam frowns at him again, deeper this time. “At least let me… I dunno… rub your back.”

“Sam, don’t be a chick,” Dean says.

“I’m not _being a chick_ ,” Sam says with a roll of his eyes. “You’re hurt and I should’ve seen it sooner, so fuck it, man, _let me help_. I’m getting tired of saying that, you know.”

“So stop saying it,” Dean suggests.

“No,” Sam says.

He unwinds himself from the quilt and gets to his feet with careful slowness then wanders off toward the back of the house. “Where’re you goin’?” Dean calls.

“To get the wintergreen stuff Bobby gave us,” Sam calls back. “It helps my joints and it ought to help your muscles, too.”

“Damnit, Sam!” 

“Damnit, Dean!” is the mocking response he gets. “I’m doing it, so whatever. Take your shirt off and shut up. You’re not the only one of us that can do for the other.”

Dean grumbles, but the thing is, the idea of the wintergreen stuff is a good one and he’s sore, aching all along his back, neck, shoulders… _everywhere_ and his pride will only get him so far when he’s so miserable. So, he takes his shirt off and sits there, waiting on Sam and feeling stupid.

When Sam comes back, he makes Dean sit sideways on the sofa with his back to him and Dean grumbles about it. Sam ignores him, pours the liniment into his hands and smoothes it down his back. “Oh, holy shit! _Cold!_ ” Dean yelps and tries to pull away.

“I know, but it warms up, believe me,” Sam says.

Dean holds still after that and lets Sam rub him down, all the while continuing to feel stupid right up until he’s half asleep and starts to feel a tad bit uncomfortable. Dean forces himself awake all the way again and shakes his head.

“Okay, I’m good,” he says as he leans forward to snatch up his shirt and pop to his feet.

Sam’s looking at him like he’s lost his mind, but Dean shrugs the look off and tugs his shirt down. “ _Now_ can we go to bed or you wanna play nurse some more?”

“Don’t be creepy,” Sam says as he stands. He’s tired and he sways a bit this time, but Dean catches him by the elbow and leads him down the hall to his room.

“G’night, Sam,” Dean says.

“G’night, Dean,” Sam says back.

They part ways at Sam’s bedroom door and Dean goes to his own room next to Sam’s. He falls into bed and tells himself that what happened in the living room was a fluke. He’s tired and the massage was nice, that’s all. Before he drifts off to sleep, Dean simply makes up his mind to never think about it again. Easy as that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

While Sam and Dean continue to eek out their existence in Blue Shoe, fall comes down from Canada and begins kissing the face of the northern states until the mornings glitter silver with frost. John stumbles from his bed at Bobby’s place every morning hungover, his mind awash with remembered bits from his nightmares. The ‘shine won’t even keep them completely away now, not the accusing stares of his dead sons’ eyes. _You didn’t take care of us, Dad,_ their grave dust dry voices tell him in unison. It’s the same every night or whenever he closes his eyes. He failed his boys and let the plague take them hard instead of finding his balls and shooting them both like he ought to have done. The idea of it still makes his stomach churn and more often than not, he pukes first thing after waking.

He went to Bobby’s that first day after finally pulling himself together enough to drive again. In Bobby’s living room he’d tried to hold it all together and tell him what had happened, but when he got to the part about Dean pulling a gun on him, he’d crumbled. Down the wall he had slid and he’d wept into his hands, unashamed of the act for the first time since Mary died. He’d told Bobby he had failed his boys and asked him what he was supposed to do now. 

Bobby had sat on the floor next to him, eyes as sad as John had ever seen them and cleared his throat. His answer had been a simple one, “I don’t know.”

He’d offered to go back in a few months to bury the boys if John didn’t want to do it, but John had told him to stay the hell away. They were his kids and he’d take care of that much. Then he’d started drinking and it hadn’t happened. Each day he means to go out to the blue granite house and do it, but each day something else comes along and he puts it off one more time.

He knows it’s because he doesn’t want to see their bodies, smell the stink of their flesh, which is _his_ flesh, rotting. He only hopes that they were given some peace and allowed to pass on in their fevered sleep. However it happened, John knows he will find them in the bed together. Sam would’ve gone days before Dean and John knows that Dean sat right there by his dead body until he climbed into bed with him for his own final rest. He knows none of this for real, of course, but he knows— _knew_ , he has to remind himself they’re truly gone all the time—his boys well.

Today he will not even get the opportunity to tell himself the lie about going to the house to bury Sam and Dean because today they have to hit the road for a reaping. It’s the first one they’ve had since Elmo, but Jodie came by the house the night before after getting word from Ellen about a place in Iowa that was in need. They’d been sent for and as Reapers it is their duty to go when they are called. They did all of their packing the night before, so the Impala and Bobby’s truck are ready to go. All they need to do is eat something for breakfast then hit the road.

Before John can even consider the scrambled eggs he knows Bobby will make, he makes a stop in the bathroom and vomits until his throat is raw. He’s lost weight these last few months, at first because he wouldn’t eat; he had no appetite. Then it was because his guilt-riddled grief wouldn’t let him keep anything down for long. Now it’s the nightmares, which are just another part of that same guilt-riddled grief. He thinks that in time he will get better and one day he’ll probably be able to make it back to the house to take care of his sons. It’s a lie that sustains him, so mostly he believes it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Twining, Iowa was once a mid-sized town that lost roughly 85% of its overall population when the plague came to visit it. What was left were a handful of survivors of the plague (a grand total of six) and the rest were people that just hadn’t gotten sick. All of them bailed on Twining in two small waves—ripples, really—and left behind a beautifully preserved ghost town, save the stink of decay ripening in the crisp air and making it murky.

Eventually, a small group of twenty survivors, about half from Washington and the other half from Idaho, found Twining and set up shop. In such a small number they were safe from the plague’s curious touch, but soon more people came. Then more and more and more until, at its peak, Twining boasted one of the highest refugee populations in the United States; a whopping 571 people, all cohabitating and working cooperatively toward rebuilding some semblance of a society amongst themselves. They would’ve been okay if they’d kept their population smaller, maybe no bigger than 250 souls, but people clump together like coral and wave their little feelers in the air, questing for companionship. The plague was happy to join their party of 571, and within two months, it had chewed its way through 193 citizens.

It was then the Reapers were sent for and a young woman was set loose into the night to find them in Wyoming. Behind her, more people lay dying and others were waiting their turn. 

By the time the Reapers arrive early one morning, the sky still dark above them, only 62 people remain in Twining and 33 of them are already showing early signs of the plague. It didn’t burn itself out after the first wave of its bacterial fists because the people banded together instead of scattering apart. They packed close in to one another and spread it around like red confetti. Sharing is caring, after all—in a stupid, self-defeating way.

“Balls,” Bobby mutters from behind his surgical mask as they creep through the streets. Behind them there is the squeal of hogs being harassed by wolves and finally, there’s a death scream as one is felled by the pack. He’s always liked wolves and now they provide a damn fine service.

Jo jumps and looks around behind her into the dark until Ellen takes her arm and gently turns her back facing Twining. “Let it go, honey, they’re just doing what they’re meant to do,” Ellen murmurs.

“I just don’t want them doing it to _me_ ,” Jo says with a shudder. “Or you or _any_ of us. Mom, they could be watching us right now.”

“You mean the wolves or the hogs?” Rufus asks.

Jo shudders again and doesn’t answer him. He has a good point.

They start with the euthanizations, going into a single apartment building and picking locks on doors to gain entry. Most people are unconscious or so sick they don’t even notice them. One man, driven mad with fever and the plague’s effect on his nervous system, tries to tackle Ellen to the ground with the intention of killing her—to his sick mind, she’s a giant praying mantis come to chew his head off. She sidesteps him and puts a bullet in the back of his head as he wheels away toward the wall, still screaming nonsense. The ones who get sick like that remind her of zombies. In a way it makes killing them easier and her aim is never off—with zombies you have to shoot for the head.

There’s an elderly woman sitting beside her husband who is right at death’s door, black with septicemia all the way up to his shoulders. His toes and part of his left hand have already fallen off. She’s as healthy as a horse though. Rufus offers her the chance to leave, but she only shakes her head. “When you’re done with Larry, do me.”

“You’re not sick,” Rufus says. “You can leave here and you’ll be alright, least for a while.”

The old woman laughs softly, the sound sad and catching in her throat. “That I may, but without him, I won’t be living at all. Do you understand?”

Rufus swallows and for a while, he says nothing. He can feel her dark blue eyes on him, waiting with eerie patience. Finally, he nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me Alice,” she says as she takes her husband’s rotting hand in hers, not minding the way the skin splits like overripe fruit under her light touch. She leans forward and kisses his burning forehead then sits back with a nod. “Go on now,” she tells Rufus. “Let’s get this over with.”

Larry and Alice are the closest Rufus has ever come to crying in all the times he’s done this. He doesn’t weep though and when he’s done with them, both of them lying side by side with a blanket pulled over their bodies, he douses the place with kerosene and runs a line of knotted fuse out the door on his way out.

On the very top floor of the apartment building, John finds two dead parents in the master bedroom, one black with septicemia, the other red with pneumonic plague. He moves out of the room after spraying it down and then goes through the rest of the apartment. In the back bedroom, he finds identical twin boys about ten years old wrapped up together in bed. Their hair is so red it’s nearly orange and their skin is mostly one big freckle. They look nothing like Sam and Dean who didn’t look much like each other for all of that. Seeing those kids like that, holding on to one another makes John stumble backwards though because for a second, their hair isn’t red and they aren’t ten years old either. Those twins are his boys who for all their differences fit together and mirrored one another all at the same time.

“He won’t wake up,” one of the twins says when he peels his sticky eyelids up to look at John. He has one blue eye and one brown eye. John wonders if the other boy’s eyes are like that, but his eyes are closed and his chest is still now that John’s looking. He won’t ever open his eyes again. “I don’t feel good,” the boy says and then he begins to cry. “Why won’t Allen wake up? Is it the sickness? Is it, mister?”

“Yeah,” John says. His voice is faint, faltering.

“Am I sick, too? My leg, it hurts real bad and my face is all hot,” Allen’s twin tells John. His voice is already starting to fade on him. He’s in the very early stages, but he’ll be in a stupor with fever in another hour or so. John knows what he needs to do, but be damned if he wants to. The kid’s eyes flutter closed, but he forces them open again and this time, there’s fear in them. “You’re a Reaper, aren’t you? It’s why you’re wearing all black. My mom and dad told me and Allen about Reapers.”

“Yeah,” John says again. The word comes out a croak. “I’m… I’m sorry, kid.”

The little boy who John only knows as “Allen’s twin” just cries harder and hides his face in his dead brother’s shoulder. John feels some awful sound coming up in his throat as he draws his gun, takes careful aim and pulls the trigger. His knees make a cracking sound when he hits the floor while the report of the shot is still ringing in the room. When he looks up, he sees Sam and Dean all over again, except this time he’s shot them both dead.

Reality is starting to melt around the edges of John Winchester’s world and he’s walking a little further into a waking nightmare every single day. Because he let his boys down. He let his boys _die_.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They do a thorough sweep of Twining after they’re done with the apartment building. Mostly they find bodies from the plague’s first fete in town that the newcomers hadn’t bothered to haul out for burial and in one house on the edge of town, they find the body of a pregnant woman. Her brown eyes stare up from her bloody face at nothing and her cold hands grip her swollen belly.

There is a mess of blood beneath her that makes Ellen turn her head away. It’s not the first time they’ve seen something like this, but it never stops being awful. A pregnant woman dead from the plague is a sad sight to see. Even if the mother should by some miracle survive, the only thing she’s got to look forward to is a violent miscarriage or a stillborn child. Usually it doesn’t happen that way though and it’s made women about a thousand times more fierce when they’re pregnant. If they make it through the birth healthy and with a healthy child to show for all their sacrifice, they’re some of the most dangerous people to cross these days.

They light the house up and then move back through town, everyone quiet and exhausted. Reaping is hard work, but it’s the emotional and mental toll of the job that wears some people down to nubs and makes others hard; so hard they seem made of ice. It’s not that though, being hard and cold is simply their way of dealing with what they see. It gets them through and lets them sleep at night with at least some of their sanity intact.

Back at the apartment building, they finish with their fuses, knotting them all into one long rope that they will drag out to a safe spot and spark. John and Bobby are the last ones in the building, working their way down from the top floor and meeting in the lobby. Satisfied with the work, Bobby turns to leave and stops at the door when he realizes John isn’t following him.

“Come on,” Bobby says. “Daylight’s wastin’ and I want some grub before I have to take watch.”

“You go on,” John says. His gaze is sad and his voice is flat. It makes Bobby frown. “I want to do one more quick check, make sure everything’s in order.”

“John,” Bobby says. He lets go of the door handle to take a step toward his friend.

John holds his hand up and shakes his head. “I’ll be right behind you, Bobby. Just go on now.”

“John, don’t,” Bobby says.

John just looks at him. “Don’t what? Do my job?”

“That ain’t what I meant,” Bobby says.

“Then I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John says. He gestures at the door and says again, “Go on, I’ll be right behind you.”

That funny look is gone from his face and Bobby thinks for a moment that he was just imagining it anyway. John’s not been right since he lost Sam and Dean, but that stands to reason. He’s always the last one out of any town, too, because he’s particular about everything being right. _No more fuck-ups like before,_ is what he always says. He wants to make sure the burns stay controlled, that no more towns get burnt to cinder and ash unless that is actually the plan. Usually it is, but Twining, because of the way people contained themselves in this one building, is going to be left mostly alone save a few scorch marks on neighboring structures.

So, Bobby nods. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll see you out there.”

“Yep,” John says. He watches Bobby go and starts counting to a hundred under his breath.

When he reaches one hundred, he pulls his lighter from his pocket, rolls the spark wheel and touches the flame to the length of fuse in his hand. He hasn’t felt this calm in a long, long time.


	4. Chapter 4

_“Sights that haunt the soul forever  
Poisoning life ‘til life is done.”_

— The Black Death of Bergen

Once there was a man whose name was a synonym for “in favor of vast quantities” (more or less) who said that the plague spared only the most wicked. He wasn’t sure if it was by chance or providential design—he was vague in the way most philosophers are—but he wholeheartedly supported his theory.

The plague would’ve liked to tell him that it didn’t pick and choose that way, it was just that sometimes it could get a grip on someone, but it couldn’t keep it. Some people have always had a particular _something_ in their makeup that gives the plague ten different kinds of hell when it comes to setting up housekeeping in their systems. Sometimes it triumphs over them, but usually it gets shaken off after a few days and is sent packing. The fact that more often than not that certain _something_ is part of a particularly nasty person’s makeup is purely coincidental. It’s really quite annoying, but the plague will allow that it helps give new meaning to the saying “too mean to die.”

It finds a fine example in a man named Jack and his wife, Lisbeth. It scrabbles all over Jack for a hold, but gets shaken off every time. It does, however, get a grip on Lisbeth and it hangs on for three days straight. She cries and clings to her husband’s hand. Oddly enough, throughout it all and beneath her terror, the woman is spitting mad at having been _inconvenienced_ so. She is positively enraged at the plague having _dared_ climb into her body and try to kill her.

The plague learns during one of its little jaunts into her thought processes that her anger with it stems from her firm belief that _she_ is the one who does the killing, not the other way around. The plague’s grip on her is already starting to slip when it learns that particular tidbit. It has managed to stay around long enough to find out that’s part of the reason she and Jack are so happy together. He, too, is a killer and they love picking through the survivors and cutting them to ribbons on weekends. By the time the plague flitters out of Lisbeth’s system, it’s a tad bemused by all of that. As it goes, it thinks, _Well, isn’t that just the way of it?_ then leaves them to do as they will.

The plague’s world tour has slowed considerably since it first burst free in Massachusetts all those years ago. People have scattered hither and thither, willy-nilly-like, but they’re mostly learning to stay _away_ from one another. The plague waits for them to clump together in little wads to strike gold most of the time, although it does get lucky on occasion. People wander and their wandering sometimes takes them through heavily infected areas where the rodent populations are booming and the plague is having a lovely time. Ground squirrels and prairie dogs are among its favorites. They remind it of the Eurasian steppe where it found a cozy niche among the tarabagan populations hundreds of years ago.

The Reapers, while initially annoying, have earned the plague’s full ire. Their work started out small, but their numbers have grown and with that, so has the scope of what they do. The day they burn Chicago, the plague’s hatred flares bright as a billion tiny suns. It found a firm stronghold there and what’s more, it _kept_ it until the day the Reapers—dozens of them from several different regions in the U.S., Canada and Mexico—banded together to burn it out.

People are drawn to major cities despite themselves—cities promise shelter and plunder galore—so the plague never really grew bored. Dallas, Houston and San Francisco all went before Chicago and the plague’s outrage grew with every conflagration. It made it free of the city in a few pieces, but most of its livelihood was left behind to roast. The Reapers are the plague’s plague and it despises them; where one falls another will step in to take their place. It really hates it when people fight back and people are ever so much smarter now than they used to be, which only makes it worse. Bitches and bastards, each and every Reaper.

Despite the constant roadblocks it faces, the plague does still get out and meet new people on a pretty regular basis. Business may be slow, but it has not stopped entirely and that’s a good thing at least. The plague considers itself the original optimist and always tries to look on the bright side of any rusted coin it is tossed.

There’s a man from Connecticut who teaches the plague the true meaning of the word _misogynist_. He proves the point that the plague doesn’t only spare the wicked, but the plague can’t tell anyone that and it sulks over the renewed realization while it plunders the man’s body. His name is Theodore and once, before this all started, he was a wealthy investment banker. His main feeling toward women is that the best things for them to do is cook, clean and suck his cock. When they’re not doing that then he strongly feels their best use is to stay barefoot and pregnant. While the plague understands humankind’s incessant need to breed like wildfire and scatter their progeny to the four winds—the more the merrier, it says—it really cannot grasp the logic behind keeping the carriers of said progeny barefoot for the duration of their pregnancy.

Theodore’s wife has grown to hate him over the years and he knows it, but he also knows she’s too afraid of him to leave. So, usually he mocks her with his knowledge shortly before he starts hitting her. Most of the time he does so in front of their seven children, allowing it to serve as a lesson to both the boys and the girls. He values the lives of his male children over those of his female children and calls them disgusting names. When his oldest daughter begins to bloom into a woman, he starts paying a lot more attention to her than any father should.

The plague takes him in the spring and learns all of that and because it can, it starts to turn Theodore black. There’s no reason behind it, the plague doesn’t hate anyone for how they may feel, but the truth is, it doesn’t much like Mr. Theodore Rosengard. The plague does learn that Theodore’s hatred of women stems from the very real, though rarely acknowledged, truth that he hates them because he’s _afraid_ of them.

His wife watches him die with a sunny smile on her face and when his cock turns black and falls off, she begins to laugh. The woman is beautiful, even after all the harsh treatment she’s suffered, but that beauty is tired and strained most of the time. When she laughs at her husband’s bad death she is gorgeous again, if only for a little while. When Theodore’s lungs have rattled out their last breath she takes their two surviving children—both girls—and leaves their rich Connecticut home. She tells her daughters that they are free at last and begins teaching them that they _aren’t_ meat for men to paw at like her own mother should’ve done for her. The plague bids them _adieu_ and watches them go through the eyes of the squirrels in the trees, the rabbits in the brush, the rats burrowing beneath the overgrown hedgerows.

The plague’s socio-anthropological excursion continues ever onward and along the way, it meets someone who is the glaring opposite of Theodore Rosengard. She’s what some people refer to as a radical feminist, except she doesn’t hate men because she’s afraid of them. She mostly just finds them and their penises disgusting. The plague finds her as curious as it did Theodore and wonders what would’ve happened if they’d ever met. It thinks that someone may’ve wound up dead, but that’s okay, too.

It gets quite the surprise when it finds out its new friend considers any kind of vaginal penetration to be rape, including the use of tampons. There is a particular brand of skewed logic there that the plague finds endlessly fascinating. It is also left with a question: While it didn’t penetrate her vagina, it did enter her body without her permission. So, does that make the plague a rapist as well? It ponders all of that while Alyssa Franklin is coughing up gobs of blood. Ultimately, it decides that she at least would think so and the plague is appalled. It is no rapist, merely a curious and—it can admit this—somewhat obnoxious tourist. Alyssa Franklin dies feeling violated and the plague slinks onward, feeling a touch ashamed and a lot inappropriate.

After Alyssa, the plague wanders off in the bloodstream of the hog that ate part of her face after she died. It hopes it isn’t stuck there for very long and wishes it could catch a ride with a vampire. It thinks its favorite hosts may be vampires. They really are a treat and they do so much of the plague’s work for it. Like any blood drinking parasite, a vampire needs to feed on its victims and so, it spreads the plague’s love around like a bad case of the clap. Learning that modern day folks love vampires so much is cutesy and amusing to the plague. It never would’ve thought fleas with human faces could become popular. It’s kind of people to give them a place in their hearts though, sure, if a bit misguided.

Instead of a vampire, the plague ends up tangoing with a demon after finally getting away from the hog and finding refuge in the body of a man in his mid-40s. Shortly after the plague has started looking around, a demon hitches a ride in its newly infected host as well. It tries to push the plague out, but the plague pushes right back and refuses to let go. It was there first and the demon is squatting on its real estate, not the other way around.

The plague has been dealing with demons for thousands of years, so it’s no stranger to their kind. It thrashes and screams as the plague devours it as well. It threatens to burn it off the face of the planet and the plague thinks, _No, that’s what the Reapers do_. The demon and all of its power is useless in the face of the plague and so it succumbs like so many of its brethren before it.

Demons were particularly prolific in the 14th century when everyone thought that the harder they prayed, the more likely they were to keep demons at bay. A few well placed demons wearing the faces of clergymen took care of that and so it went. A poor farmer may give his tithe to the parish priest, but in all reality he was paying a demon. Satan netted himself a lot of souls back in the day: Pay a priest to cure a sick child, walk right into a contract with a glorified crossroads demon. It was an incredibly clever game to run on the peasantry and gentry alike. The plague sent many of them right back to hell once it began its tour of medieval Europe and the outraged indignation it had faced was quite impressive.

It can hold lesser demons just fine, those demons that once were human because they are fallible once they’re inside a human body. They can try to leave, but usually they can’t get out because they’re all tangled up in the plague’s web. So, they die with their hosts and the plague doesn’t particularly mind it so much. It kind of likes catching demons. They always have the _best_ stories, although the hisses, threats and spat curses do get tiresome.

The Fallen—as they collectively call themselves—are another story. The plague has no sway over them and they shake it off like a duck shakes off water. They were never human and so the plague is powerless, sent limping off into the sunset to find another, more welcoming, host. They’re the ones responsible for letting the plague loose from the Genoese city of Caffa in the first place though. The Fallen steered the ships all the other refugees were on.

Given the medieval penchant for exaggeration, the plague’s not surprised to know that historians disbelieve all the accounts of the ships sailing for _months_ after Caffa’s end. The ships were steered and crewed by the Fallen and when they were done scattering the plague about different ports, they left their hosts and they dropped dead shortly thereafter. The plague was used by them back then, but to what ends it has no idea. It is still offended, however.

It’s noticed more and more of the Fallen roaming the Earth lately. It thinks they’ve been here for a while though, before the plague set out to make its way in the world. It wonders about that, too, but none of the Fallen are talking and the lesser demons are always so busy kicking up a fuss that it’s hard for the plague to find many answers there either. It’s something about people though and how they’ve opened themselves to sin more fully.

The plague wonders why the Fallen and other demons seem to only be realizing that now. Humans have had their legs spread wide for sin since the day they climbed down from the trees. Mostly, that’s just part of their nature and the plague thinks the demons are being vultures about the whole thing. People can’t be blamed for the way God made them, after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s two years and a move into the very southern edge of Montana before Bobby makes it out to the blue granite house to try and do what John never could bring himself to do. Part of the reason he moved in the first place was to try and put distance between himself and the tomb the Winchester boys lay in. It did no good, those kids haunt him almost as bad as they haunted their poor father. Bobby can never escape Sam and Dean or his responsibility to them and it is a heavy burden to bear. Without John there, the mantle fell to him and instead of manning up and dealing with it, he tried to run away. Sam and Dean follow him though and wake him in the middle of the night from dreams of their bloody faces peering down at him as their black fingers reach for his hands.

One night in late spring, Bobby can’t stand the sad-eyed ghosts of those kids haunting his mind anymore, so he packs up his new ride and heads out with a frown and a few pints of moonshine to keep him company. He arrives in mid-morning of the next day, but so far out in the forest, the mist is still curled thick on the ground like a lazy cat. Beneath it, the bright, plush green of the lawn whoever owned the place before had laid peeks through and Bobby takes a deep breath before snugging his cap down on his head and climbing out of the truck.

He’s going around to the bed of his truck to get his shovel—he thinks he’ll dig the graves first. It may spur him on to go into the house at last. That and it’s also a morbid form of procrastination—if he’s outside digging graves for a few hours then that’s a few hours he doesn’t have to go inside and see their bodies. He’s got his hand on the shovel handle when he hears a gun cock behind him.

“Turn around real slow and keep your hands where I can see them,” the person behind him says.

Bobby freezes, fingers still stretched out to touch the shovel. He knows that voice and his heart does an excited, startled flutter in his chest. “Dean?” he asks.

“Depends,” the voice says. “Who the hell are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” Bobby asks as he slowly turns around to meet Dean’s hard eyes.

He knows Bobby when he sees his face, sure as shit. The sound of a door slamming is what got his attention and when he slipped around from the back, all he saw was a ratty plaid coat and some stranger digging around in the bed of a truck he didn’t recognize. He and Sam haven’t seen anyone in ages and without photographs to go by, Dean has noticed that it’s getting harder and harder to remember faces with any kind of accuracy. It’s Bobby though, the recognition comes flooding back to him and when Bobby smiles, bright and happy, Dean lowers the rifle.

“Bobby,” Dean says as he sags a little.

Relief and joy are flooding him, competing with each other for which will take the lead in his emotions. He lets the gun drop without any concern for the safety being off at the moment and goes to Bobby to wrap him in a hug. Relief has won; sick, overwhelming relief to find a familiar face standing in the overgrown driveway. Relief at knowing at least someone hasn’t forgotten them.

Bobby smells like rosemary and peppermint, much like Dean himself does, and under that is the sharp tang of moonshine and gunpowder. Familiar smells; _Bobby_ smells, and Dean has to choke back a sob when Bobby hugs him back fiercely hard.

“I am so sorry, son,” Bobby tells him. Dean’s shaking against him and he wants to comfort the kid, but he’s not entirely sure how. “Sorry I didn’t come sooner and sorry I left you out here so long. And… Dean, I’m sorry about Sam.”

Dean surprises the hell out of him by pulling away and grinning at him. Bobby stares at him and worries that the poor boy has lost his damned mind being left alone to stir around in his grief. It doesn’t make him feel any better either when Dean says, “Sam’s inside, probably wondering what the hell’s going on. Come in and say hello.”

Bobby swallows and nods, but doesn’t argue with Dean, he just follows him around to the back of the house and on inside, wondering all the while exactly what Dean’s been doing here all this time. His surprise is redoubled and he actually takes a stumbling step backward when he sees Sam standing in the kitchen near the backdoor with a gun of his own.

“Sonofabitch!” Bobby cries and slaps his leg in his excitement. “Look at you, standing there all… all…”

“Alive?” Sam suggests with a sardonic little smile as he lowers his gun.

He’s not as quick to hug him as Dean was and he takes a moment to study Bobby, his eyes shrewd and expression a little suspicious. He glances at Dean though and sees his grin, his very obvious happiness and finally relents. He’s happy, too, but he’s not as quick to let go of his anger as Dean is. Sam has come to learn about himself as he’s grown up and one thing he’s learned is that he has a tendency to hold grudges.

“Hey, Bobby,” Sam finally says as he steps forward to hug him as well.

When he steps away, Dean goes to stand beside him and they both look at Bobby who’s watching them with an expression of wonder on his face and watery looking eyes. He swipes at them once and grumbles something about “damned allergies” before shaking his head.

“You two are a sight for sore eyes, I tell you that,” he says.

Dean’s still smiling and looking mighty pleased with himself, which Bobby figures he’s allowed to do since he’s the one that stayed. The one who told John Sam was going to make it and knowing Dean, he truly believed that, too, even when it was obvious no one else did.

“You, too, man,” Dean says. “You, too.”

There are questions in his eyes, Bobby can see them plain as day; questions that all ask pretty much the same thing, _Where’s Dad?_ He’s not going to like the answer when he finally gets around to asking and Bobby doesn’t think he’s going to tell the boys the absolute truth about it either. They don’t need that on top of everything else they’ve been through. At least now he knows what he can do with the Impala. He’s held onto it since the day he drove it back to his place with Ellen following along behind him in his truck. 

“You want some breakfast, Bobby?” Sam asks, effectively breaking the silence that is growing thick with the tension of unspoken words.

“I sure as hell do,” Bobby says. “I drove all night and right now, I’m starved.”

“Have a seat then,” Sam tells him. Then he pushes at Dean to get his attention. “Did you get the milk off the porch?”

“Shit, no, I got kinda sidetracked, Sammy,” he says with a nod towards Bobby who’s now sitting at the table.

“Point,” Sam says. “Go get it though and I’ll start cooking.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Dean snarks, but he goes and Sam gives Bobby a little smile before turning to fuss with the wood stove.

“Sam, I’m so damned sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Bobby tells him when Dean’s gone.

“It’s okay, I guess,” Sam says. “You thought we were dead, it’s not like you needed to hurry.”

“Sam,” Bobby says again, but he’s not sure how to follow it up.

Sam only shrugs and then stoops to get a skillet from the cabinet. “Don’t worry about it,” he says.

He puts the skillet over the burner to preheat and then turns around to face Bobby. He’ll be damned, but he thinks the kid’s even taller now and has started to fill out some; not much yet, but he isn’t quite the beanpole he used to be either.

Sam studies him with that same shrewd look from before and finally sighs then rakes his long hair out of his face where it’s fallen. “Dad’s dead isn’t he? Either that or he’s more of a coward than I ever thought he could be. Which is it?”

Bobby only shakes his head and looks down at the tabletop. Sam waits by the stove and outside, Dean can be heard coming back to the door. “First one,” Bobby mutters.

Sam grunts his acknowledgement. All he says is, “Go easy on Dean when you tell him. He still thinks he’s going to come back one day.”

“Alright,” Bobby says.

He notices that Sam doesn’t sound sad or surprised at all. Not even a little bit. A glance up shows him that the shrewd look in Sam’s eyes has turned hard as stone, but when Dean comes in with a bucket of milk, it melts away.

“Took you long enough,” Sam says.

“Had to get the rifle out of the yard, too. Almost forgot that,” Dean says.

“Ah,” Sam says.

He goes back to piddling around with the food; fresh caught brook trout. Dean pours himself and Bobby a glass of fresh milk then goes to sit down with him.

“So, tell me what’s been going on,” Dean tells him. He looks desperate for news of the outside world, such as it is.

They talk while Sam cooks and when everyone’s got their plate, they talk some more. Everyone carefully avoids the elephant in the room named John Winchester and breakfast is pretty enjoyable. It’s after they’re done and sitting in the living room when it comes up. Sam’s reading and Dean’s watching Bobby, who’s half dozing in a chair, with an anxious look on his face.

“Bobby,” he finally says. His voice is soft, uncustomary hesitance making it halting on those two syllables.

“You want to know about your daddy, right?” Bobby asks. He ignores the churning in his gut and waits Dean out.

“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir,” Dean says. “Why didn’t he come?”

Sam’s stopped reading now and is looking between Dean and Bobby, brows drawn together in a frown while he waits for what—for how—Bobby is going to break the news to Dean.

“John didn’t make it out of a fire,” Bobby tells him. It’s the simplest form of the truth and he goes with it. It’s believable, too, because setting fires like they do is dangerous work anyway. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, boys, but I just didn’t know how.”

Dean is quiet but for a whoosh of breath as he slumps back against the sofa. His expression is one of wide-eyed grief and pain as he struggles to draw another breath. When he speaks, he asks, “Is that why he didn’t come back?”

“Yeah,” Bobby lies. “He meant to, was going to come back right after we finished that burn, but he got caught with a bad fuse on a bomb like that poor kid, Ash, did and well…” He trails off with a sad sigh and closes his eyes to hide the lie in them.

He doesn’t want to or know how to tell Dean (and Sam, too, although he intellectually knows, Bobby thinks) that John was too broken up to come back and even _look_ , to even find out. He’d buried them in his mind already, even though their spirits wouldn’t stay down at least in his head and in his dreams, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to bury them for real. Bobby thinks he knows that for John, seeing his dead kids would’ve been the thing that broke his brain for good. He went anyway, burned himself up like a torch, but Bobby’s pretty sure John had been dead since the day he walked away from this house.

He remembers an old song that went like so, _It’s better to burn out than to fade away_. John burned, consumed from the inside out by grief and guilt, but he took that route because Bobby thinks he could feel himself fading away. Being here now, sitting with Sam and Dean who are alive and well, Bobby wishes his friend could’ve mustered up one last reserve of courage to face the one thing he feared the most. If he had, John would still be here and may even be better now than he was then. Instead, all Bobby has is the Impala and the lighter he dug out of the ash and smoldering remains of that apartment building in Twining. It had taken him three days to get through all that mess even with Ellen, Jo and Rufus helping him, but none of them had been able to leave _all_ of John Winchester in the ruins.

 _Hey, hey, my, my_ , indeed, Bobby reckons.

Sam and Dean say nothing, but when Bobby opens his eyes a crack, he finds Dean furiously wiping his face. When Sam hugs him, he doesn’t fight it too hard and finally settles against his brother with his face hidden in Sam’s hair until he can’t seem to take it any longer.

“I need a minute here,” Dean says as he pulls away from Sam. He rises from the sofa and disappears down the hall.

Sam watches him go with sad eyes and when there’s the sound of a door slamming only then does he look at Bobby. “Thanks,” is all he says.

“Don’t mention it,” Bobby tells him. His voice sounds hollow to his own ears; he’s just dredged up one of the worst memories of his life. Given all that he’s seen, that’s really damned bad, too.

A little while later, Sam offers Bobby a spare room for him to rest up in. Bobby thanks him and goes where Sam directs him. Once there, he shuts the door and crashes out on the musty smelling bed for a much needed snooze. In his dreams, he tells John his boys are alive and John steps out of the flames with a smile, ready to go home.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby rests up and spends a few days with the boys. On the morning of his fourth day there, he asks if they want to ride back up to Montana with him. He says he’s got some things he thinks they ought to have. They want to go, he can tell it, but they hesitate anyway.

“How’re we supposed to get back?” Dean asks.

“He’ll probably bring us home, Dean,” Sam tells him.

“He can’t haul us back and forth like some kind of weird plague-era redneck taxi service,” Dean says.

Bobby snorts at that, but they’re doing whatever it is they’ve always done and he may as well not be there right now.

“He said that it’s not _that_ far,” Sam says. “Besides, what do you want to do, walk back?”

“No, course not,” Dean says. “I just don’t like being a moocher.”

“It’s not mooching if someone _offers_ ,” Sam argues.

“I dunno,” Dean says. “Still feels like mooching to me.”

Bobby listens to them with a faint smile then loudly clears his throat to get their attention. They stop bickering to stare at him like they’ve just realized he’s there. “You two idjits can drive can’t you?”

“Yes,” they answer in unison.

Bobby nods and then gets up from the table. “Then it’s settled. I can take you up there and then you can bring yourselves back here.”

“How?” Dean asks.

Bobby rolls his eyes and then taps the middle of his forehead twice in quick succession. “How do ya think, genius?”

“Oh,” Dean says as he blinks furiously at Bobby’s tapping. He flails at Bobby and he takes his hand away with a smirk.

“Dumbass,” Sam scoffs. Then he yelps, “ _Ow!_ ” when Dean kicks him under the table.

“That’s what you get for calling me a dumbass,” Dean says.

“Well, it was a stupid question,” Sam says in his own defense. He yelps louder when Dean kicks him harder that time. “Stop it, you asshole!” Sam snaps as he leans over the table to punch Dean on the shoulder.

“Hey!” Dean cries.

“Both of you quit it!” Bobby snaps. He’s fighting back laughter though. He’s missed these boys like all hell. “Go pack up some of your crap and let’s hit the road.”

“Okay,” they grouse.

“Good,” Bobby says. He watches them slump off toward the living room, still lightly pushing at each other and finally allows himself a smile. “Idjits,” he mutters again under his breath.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The drive back to the little patch of nowhere Bobby’s settled into in Montana is a quiet one. They all talk a bit at first, the boys looking around at everything with something a lot like wonder. It’s been a long time since they’ve seen anything aside from the house, their yard and the miles and miles and miles of woods surrounding it. Conversation slows to a trickle about halfway there and stops entirely when they’re about an hour out.

They’re both wondering what it is that Bobby’s got for them. Dean’s thinking, somewhat fearfully, that it may be the charred bones of their father. He doesn’t know if he can deal with that if that’s what it is; a bundle of carbonized bone that weighs almost nothing when to his mind, John will always be larger than life. Sam’s not all too sure what it could be. His bitterness at their father’s abandonment has left him not wanting anything that may’ve once been John’s. Dean’s sad silence makes him feel guilty for that and he casts furtive glances at his brother all the way there, even when the only light comes from the glow of the dashboard.

The moment they pull up to Bobby’s they see what it is they’ve been brought here for. Their inheritance sits in Bobby’s front yard, black paint glossy in the moonlight, the roof reflecting the stars back up to the sky above it. Bobby’s taken care of the Impala and Sam, even with his anger, feels his heart thud with something a lot like happiness. Almost his whole life story, like Dean’s, is written in the miles on the Impala’s odometer.

Dean stands beside the car for a long time, hand resting on the driver’s side door handle lightly, fingers afraid to curve and pull it up to open it. He thinks it will disappear if he tries to slide into the driver’s seat. Sam runs his hand all down its side with a look like awe on his face that is painted silver-blue in the light of the three-quarter moon. Bobby stands back and watches them revel in their homecoming, each in their own different way, until Sam stands beside Dean on the driver’s side and they hold to each others shoulder.

“Here,” Bobby says as he reaches into his coat pocket for the set of keys he’s carried with him like a good luck charm. He doesn’t need them any longer, they’ve found their true owners.

It’s strange to him, almost mythic in a way, that something made of metal and glass and leather—nothing about it alive—can have so much life. It’s even stranger that it can put so much light back in Sam and Dean’s tired eyes. It’s just a car, but what it represents to the Winchesters is so much more than that.

Dean’s smiling when he takes the keys and closes his fingers around them. He holds them for a minute then passes them to Sam so that he can feel the weight of them in his hand as well. The whole sight is peculiar, painted in the stark bone light of the moon and stars, but it’s a good thing. For the boys, maybe it’s something like closure as well. 

Once they’ve come inside, Bobby gives them the Zippo and John’s duffel bag. Dean looks through it while Sam rubs at the lighter, trying to polish off some of the soot to reveal the bright metal underneath. He gets it off in a couple of spots, but the lighter is still scorched black over most of its body. Bobby gives him a new wick and flint for it and when Sam gets it all put back together, it catches at the first turn of the spark wheel. Sam stares at the tiny orange flame and Bobby has to look away. He can’t stop imagining that it had to have looked just like that the day John lit the fuse that burned him alive.

“Sammy, look,” Dean says. He’s found something at the bottom of the bag and is holding it in his hand, eyes wide and lashes trembling faintly. “It’s mom.”

He passes a photograph to Sam who looks at it with sad curiosity. “Yeah,” he says.

He lightly touches her face with a deepening frown. He’s tried so many times to remember _anything_ about her that he’s lost count. He was baby though and babies don’t remember things like that. He wishes he could; he’s only ever been jealous of Dean about one thing and it’s that he got to know their mom. He gets to remember her. Sam has some kind of empty place inside of him that he thinks was meant to be filled up with his own memories and feelings for his mother, but while he loves her, it’s an abstract kind of love; the love of an _idea_. 

“That’s you, you know,” Dean says as he scoots closer to Sam. He taps the bundle in Mary’s arms. “The day she brought you home from the hospital and stuck me with a bitch for a little brother.”

Sam smiles at that, he knows Dean doesn’t mean it, he’d have to be a fool to think that. “And I got a jerk for a big brother, right. I know how this story goes,” Sam says. “It sucks, by the way.”

“Shut up,” Dean says. He shows Sam another picture. “This is you and Dad.”

“Huh,” Sam says. He looks at the picture of his infant self asleep on John’s chest, sees the careful way his hand rests on his tiny back, holding him close and safe.

The knot that forms in his throat is sudden and unexpected and Sam fights it back down as he blinks to clear his blurry vision. This is not allowed. Because it is so, so sad and reminds him that while in a lot of ways he may hate (or at the least, resent) John, there’s still a very real part of him that loves his dad, too. The man in the picture had loved him, too and Sam thinks that the man who burned up in some plague-infected building may have loved him as well. It was just that for years leading up to that, there were so many times Sam had been unsure. He takes the picture from Dean and stares at it for a moment before putting it in the hip pocket of his jeans. Dean watches him, but doesn’t say anything about it, just goes back to looking at the rest of the pictures and telling Sam the little bits about them that he can remember.

“I didn’t know he had these,” Dean says as he looks through the pictures for about the fifth time. “Why didn’t he ever tell us?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “Maybe he…” He sighs. He’s not sure how to finish that sentence. “Nevermind. No, I don’t know.” He honestly wishes he did though.

They look at the small handful of pictures for hours, until the fronts of them are faintly sticky and smudged with their fingerprints. When Sam yawns though Dean puts the pictures away in John’s bag again and tilts his head toward the stairs. Bobby’s sat quietly and watched them all this time, interested in their little world that he’s not really a part of aside from the role of observer. Sam and Dean made their own universe years ago, he thinks and everyone else… well, they’re only tourists at best.

“You mind if we rest up here tonight, Bobby?” Dean asks him.

Bobby’s reply is a snort and a hand wave at the stairs. “No, I don’t mind. Y’all can stay as long as you want to.”

“Thanks,” Sam says and Dean nods at him.

They get up after that and tell Bobby goodnight. He sits in his chair and listens to the creak of the stair risers under their booted feet then the sounds of them settling down for the night. The sounds are as familiar to Bobby as ghosts, but more comforting by far.

He falls asleep listening to a full kind of silence; the kind of silence that is filled with the presence of others. It’s been a long time since he heard that kind of quiet.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They leave Bobby’s place late one afternoon three days later, dragging their heels and anxious all the same. They miss their house, but love Bobby’s company. His reassuring presence tells them they are not as alone as they have thought all this time. Blue Shoe calls them back though, the cow in the yard and the rosemary sitting in its pots, the garlic sprouting in the bright green grass… all of it beckons them back and so they go. Mostly glad, but a little sad, too. Such is the way of things.

Bobby sends them home with two clucking hens and a rooster so that they can eventually have even more chickens to go with the eggs they’re going to have now.

“I am gonna fry those little babies,” Dean says with a grin.

Sam shoves him for it. He’s looking forward to meat that’s not deer or elk, too, but there’s a limit. He just hopes he—and Dean, too, who for all his talk is a soft touch—can avoid getting attached to their as-yet unhatched dinners.

Bobby also gives them four pints of moonshine, a collection of the complete works of Shakespeare and about fifteen gallons of gasoline. Gasoline won’t last forever, but for now it’s holding out just fine due to the decrease in population and fewer people overall traveling much. Dean’s planning on filling up their generator out back so he and Sam can read and cook by bright electric light. They can turn on the hot water heater, assuming it still works and have proper baths. They’ll have to ration it out, only an hour or so a night, but it’s better than what they’ve had for a long time now. Everything else can go in the Impala.

On their way back, they pass a man riding a bicycle with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He looks startled and keeps a hand on the butt of his gun as they cruise past, watching him from the corners of their eyes. People are dangerous to cross now, more likely to blow someone’s shit away than say, _How-do?_ Each new stranger is no longer a potential friend, but a potential death sentence. The cluster(fuck) groups of survivors are the ones who didn’t get that memo and Sam pities them and finds them disgustingly stupid all at the same time. The man on the bicycle is of the kind who understands, who has _listened_ to the people that know what the best course of action is: Stay away from other people, particularly large groups of people. The plague loves a crowd.

Sam does sometimes wonder if out there somewhere there are people trying to find a cure for this pestilence, if there’s anyone left who could even come close. He thinks probably not, but there’s a small part of him that wants to be hopeful, wants to have faith in the idea that maybe somewhere people are trying to save everyone else.

There was at one time, when the plague first started traipsing around like a hunchbacked phantom. It was a group of scientists, some of the best and the brightest from several relevant fields sent to a laboratory underground with climate control and airtight seals on the doors. One of those scientists was sick though and he brought death into that safe underground laboratory where humanity’s hope rested on the heavy shoulders of twenty men and women, plus military personnel who were to guard them and their work.

Now there’s only two left, a man named Mike who was a soldier and another man named Luke who was a scientist. These days they sit around playing chess and enjoying the rations that will sustain them for another six to eight years. They care very little for the state of humanity, having gotten caught up in the world they’ve created for themselves to try and stave off inevitable madness. They don’t talk much either and when they do, they only murmur to one another, “I wonder if the sky is still blue…”

Sam Winchester knows none of that, of course. To his mind there is a secret laboratory high in the mountains somewhere, like one would find in old spy novels (of which he has read more than a few). There are men and women in crisp white lab coats working ‘round the clock to try and save the world’s population. They speak in many different languages and yet, they still magically seem to understand one another. They have willingly—nobly—cut themselves off from everyone else, including loved ones, in the name of the Greater Good. Their mountain retreat is accessible only in late spring and summer via a winding, treacherous mountain pass. The glow of lights from the compound will pierce dark, snowy nights like a beacon of hope in an otherwise bleak existence.

He told Dean his story—his wish-it-was-true—one night when he was still recovering from the plague. Dean had listened and felt his heart stumble in his chest with want-to-be-hope, but much like Sam, on an intellectual level he knows it isn’t so. They don’t know and never will about Mike and Luke and their never-ending game of chess. What they do know is that they (and everyone else) are alone in this and salvation is only another dirty word.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Once they’re back in Blue Shoe, life carries on as usual. They tend their garden, milk the cow and now they gather eggs every morning. In the evenings, three times a week, they treat themselves to perfectly hot baths and well lit suppers. They wallow in them like they’ve been granted access to the poshest of royal suites. 

Sam gets it in his head one day that they should do a two-man rendition of _Hamlet_. Dean balks and silently curses Bobby for ever giving Sam the collection of Shakespeare. The painful truth is that they’re both bored to tears and kind of going nuts, as tends to happen when isolation is the standard of living and the only interaction they can get is with each other. So, in the end, Dean agrees. Even Sam admits it’s not a great idea, but he’s sure they can (mostly, kind of) do it on their own.

Sam declares himself director, which is a point of contention between them, especially after he also casts himself in the lead role. Dean concedes the point of the lead role to Sam after reading five pages of the play and determining Hamlet is a whiny douche nozzle. He’s still pissed about the director thing and in the end, they compromise and co-direct. Sam is a tyrant, Dean is too lazy and they’re both fucking clueless. Thing is… They actually have a lot of fun. Maybe because fun is in short supply these days, but it’s also because they do work well together once they work the kinks out and kick the shit out of each other a couple of times.

It takes them three weeks of arguments and do-overs that masquerade as rehearsals (and do serve their ultimate purpose) before they feel they’re ready for their big debut. Their audience consists of Bessie-the-cow, the three chickens and a doe with her fawn who watches the strange spectacle from safely inside the tree line. They perform with great fanfare and melodrama, neither of them terribly good actors even though they are wonderfully good liars. Still, they give it their all, which is quite a lot since they’re playing about eighteen different characters. A nod can be given to them at least for their flexibility and editing since they’ve cut some scenes completely and edited others to within an inch of their purple life.

It’s the final scene with Horatio—played by Dean—that really kicks his ass. He’s rehearsed this scene with Sam for three weeks, but only in the final product does the weight of Hamlet’s death really hit him; the play becomes _real_ then. Maybe it’s the subtle power of Shakespeare at last swaying Dean or maybe it’s because it’s _Sam_ who claws at his arm and whispers, “ _The rest is silence_.”

All Dean knows for sure is that he’s looking at Sam, holding him in his arms and imagining all the days he thought Sam would fall silent. The times he thought Sam’s spirit would leave his body and ultimately leave Dean alone. The late afternoon lawn is faintly lit by the westering sun and the light from every candle they own. The tiny flames flicker over the grass and stretch shadows into long, grotesque things. Dean shivers and feels his fingers tighten against Sam’s shoulder where he’s holding his dying body—Hamlet’s dying body, he reminds himself. He closes his eyes, suddenly ready for the play to be over so they can get back to reality which is far kinder and not as full of four word reminders of the quietness he was almost left to endure.

When the play is finally over, Sam grins at Dean and asks, “So, what did you think?”

Dean blinks at his candle-washed brother and shakes his head before averting his eyes. His voice is a harsh rasp as he says, “I think Shakespeare sucks.”

Sam reaches out to catch his shoulder as Dean turns away. “Hey, what’s going on with you?” he asks.

Without thinking about it, Dean reaches up to lightly touch Sam’s fingers. “Nothin’,” he says. “Just tired I guess.” He pulls away from Sam and walks off, leaving Sam to extinguish the candles alone.

Sam clenches his hand into a fist, still feeling the warm tingle from where Dean’s fingers lightly touched his. The skin feels too warm and he can’t shake the feeling or the vague uneasiness in the pit of his belly that tastes like _want_ on the back of his tongue. The idea itself is so very wrong that Sam feels ashamed way down deep in his bones, but the warm tingle persists like soft needles against his fingertips.

Sam turns away from the house to stare out into the dark forest behind him. Bessie lows quietly, the sound almost like an inquiry and Sam can only shake his head. He jams his hand into his pocket, fingers still tightly fisted, and watches the night swallow the last of the sun’s light. The darkness that spreads out around him is as infinite as the starlit sky above him. It is quiet, save the softly droning _rrrrr_ of crickets.


	5. Chapter 5

_“A picture rose before him of the red glow of pyres mirrored on  
a wine dark slumberous sea, battling torches… thick, fetid smoke rising  
toward the watchful sky. Yes, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility.”_

— Albert Camus  
The Plague

Six days before Sam’s 21st birthday, Dean has the bright idea that they should take up reaping again. Sam blames Bobby for that. He comes to visit twice a month or so now and he’s always bringing stories of work out in the field to them. Sam finds most of the stories revolting. The plague scares him—now with even more reason—and euthanizing people makes his stomach flip. 

While it may be a merciful act, it’s also still murder and maybe, just _maybe_ , some of those euthanized individuals would live if they were left alone. Not the coughers or the blackened ones, but the ones like Sam… they may have had a chance. He’s tried to argue his case and it’s a good one, but the end result is still the same: There’s an estimated 80% mortality rate for even bubonic plague. That’s 20% higher than it was before. That’s very bad odds. Sam still doesn’t think a person’s life is something to be treated like a card game. This particular deck is stacked though, the dealer is ruthless and the house almost always wins.

So, his argument may be strong, but it buckles under the weight of truth. The kind thing is to put bullets in the brains of the sick because a 20% chance really isn’t much of a chance at all. At least it is a chance though—Sam’s tried that argument before, once again using himself as an example. Once again, it does no good. Sam half thinks Dean believes he survived because it was Dean that was taking care of him. Dean’s care, his love, for Sam equals a cure based on nothing more than faith and Dean is no charlatan preacher in a tent church. Sam won’t ever ask him, but he does wonder if Dean’s ever considered how many people out there believed the exact same thing. He wonders if Dean ever gives thought to how much crushed faith lays in shallow graves for the worms or the hogs to get at now.

All of his arguments, tried and tested (and miserable failures every one) fly right out of his head the day Dean sits down next to him on the couch and says, “I think we ought to head out to the burn Bobby told us they were prepping for.”

Sam drops his book in his surprise. It’s more Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ and it hits the floor with a bang. He wonders if Puck has suddenly become real and has decided to fuck with him for a bit. The thought is quickly discarded while he stares at Dean, who fidgets but doesn’t look away.

Since it’s short notice and Sam’s been royally startled, all he manages to splutter out is, “Dude. _No_.”

“Look, Sammy, it’s important work the Reapers do and this is a big one. This is Dayton, you know,” Dean says. “They could really use us out there and besides… it’s what we _do_.”

“No,” Sam says again. He shakes his head, takes a deep breath and tells himself to _remain calm_. “It’s not what _we_ do, Dean, it’s what you and Dad _did_. We don’t have to do anything at all if we don’t want to—and I don’t want to, for the record. It’s fucking dangerous work and it’s murder.”

Dean is silent for a minute, fingers tapping on the ripped up knees of his black jeans. They need new clothes. Theirs are starting to fall apart on them and Sam’s pants are all a bit too short—he grew another two or three inches before his body finally decided enough was enough. They could go out and do that though without having to reap _anyone_.

“We’ve been trained for this since we were kids, man,” Dean says at last. “Dad didn’t realize that at first, there’s no way he could have, but it’s what we’re meant to do.”

“Oh, really? Reaping is the family business then, is that what you’re trying to feed me here?” Sam asks. He bites his tongue to keep from adding, _And fuck Dad_.

“Yeah, I am,” Dean says. He’s all anxious earnestness here, practically pleading with Sam. “We can’t stay cooped up in this damned house forever, doing nothing but gathering eggs, picking vegetables and milking the fucking cow. There’s important work out there that still needs to be done and they need us, man. Besides, we’re eventually gonna go crazy living out here like we do.”

Sam thinks they’ve already gone crazy, it becomes kind of obvious when they both talk to a painting of a dog and sometimes half pretend it is real. The painting was hanging on Sam’s bedroom wall the day they moved in, an incredibly photorealistic oil painting of a liver and white Springer spaniel. Sam named it Barkley not long after and told Dean.

The last few years they’ve both spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at the painting that now hangs in the living room. Sam has heard Dean talking to it at least twice and he’s caught himself talking to it about triple that. Maybe Dean hasn’t noticed (Sam thinks he probably has and is trying to spare Sam in some weird way) that they’re starting to lose their shit, but Sam definitely has. Mostly he’s fine with that, too. Going crazy with his brother in the blue granite house is better than shooting people and burning cities.

“Dean—” Sam begins, but then he stops and really looks at his brother. Dean’s eyes are still pleading, but there’s a mulish set to his jaw and he’s got his shoulders squared straight and neat as you please. He’s already made up his mind, Sam realizes. He was only trying to give Sam a chance to hop on the bandwagon with him. Sam huffs out an angry breath and throws his hands up in the air. “Right,” he says. “When are you leaving?”

Dean looks surprised to have been so quickly figured out, but he doesn’t try to dance around it either. “At first light. I’m gonna drive up to Bobby’s and ride out with him.”

“Does Bobby actually know about this great plan of yours?” Sam asks him.

“No, but I figure he’ll be cool with it,” Dean says. “All hands on deck, you know.”

“And if he’s not cool with it?”

“I’ll go anyway. There’s nothing he can do to stop me.”

“Fuck, Dean.”

“I—we—gotta do something.”

The _we_ is added with a touch of hopefulness; Dean doesn’t want to do this alone. Even with a group of maybe fifty or sixty other people—city burns draw a crowd, it’s not the safest way to do things, but it’s far more efficient—Dean would still feel alone without Sam there. It’s how they work. Of course the word for that is _codependent_ , Sam knows it, Dean knows it, John knew it… everyone that’s ever met them knows it. It doesn’t matter though.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Sam says. He picks up his book and rises and walks out of the room.

Dean watches him go and swallows once before looking down at his hands where he’s clenching his knees so hard it hurts. He didn’t expect Sam to agree easily, but deep down, he did think he would agree _eventually_. He guesses he was wrong about that and there’s a part of him now that doesn’t want to go anymore, not without Sam to have his back. He _has_ to go though. To do otherwise would be admitting defeat and he can’t let his bitchy little brother have this one. It’s the principle of the thing.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam’s night is long and sleepless, he tosses and turns for hours after refusing to come out of his room for supper. He heard Dean come back a little while later and set a plate outside his door. Even Sam is aware that he’s being kind of a little girl about this, but he can’t stand the idea. He knows if he looks at Dean, shares the same space as him, Dean will start in with trying to convince him it’s a _good idea_ to start reaping again. Eventually all that’ll do is cause a hell of fight and Dean will leave for Bobby’s anyway. 

He listens to Dean moving restlessly around the house, hears the sounds of him packing up his gear for the drive out tomorrow. When Dean at last settles into bed it’s well past midnight and all Sam can think is that he’s going to be dog-ass tired driving to Montana tomorrow. He hopes he’ll be safe and not fall asleep behind the wheel. The quiet that settles into the house about an hour after Dean goes to bed tells Sam he’s sleeping now and only then does he get up.

He creeps across his room and eases the door open to get the plate of food that’s still waiting for him. Dean made chicken and potatoes tonight. It’s Sam’s favorite and he knows a bribe when he sees one. He smiles faintly and takes the plate of food into the kitchen to heat it up on the stove so he can eat, he really is starving.

He thinks while he eats, running scenarios through his head, all of them with a less than sunny outcome. Bobby gives a damn about Dean, Ellen likes him and Jo likes him _too_ much. Even Rufus is okay with them in his gruff way, but Sam can’t help but think that none of them will really watch Dean’s back. Dean has a tendency to go off half-cocked or just not think at all, which leads to Dean getting himself in trouble. For all that John was a shit parent in many ways, Sam never worried about Dean when he was working burns with him; he knew John would watch his ass.

Now he’s not too sure about any of them and Dayton is a big city. What if Dean got off on his own and found a sick one that still had some life in them? Say, enough life to be able to pull a trigger or use a knife or enough strength to overpower Dean and shove him from a high window. One bullet, one stab wound in the right place, one well-timed hard shove and _show’s over, kids_.

Sam slowly eats his potatoes and wonders: What if Dean forgets to wear his mask? What if he rushes and splashes kerosene on his pants leg without realizing it? What if no one’s there to tell him any of that? Dean’s single-minded when it comes to completing any task he’s committed to and he tends to forget to watch himself. The questions and worries spin out into an infinite loop of, _What if…?_ until he feels a little sick and shoves his half finished supper away with a sigh.

Sam wanders out of the kitchen and into the living room where he sits on the couch in the dark, staring at where Barkley hangs over the mantle. He silently confers with the dog for a while, aware of it, but not caring either. When he at last gets up from the sofa, he goes to his room to pack his own bag despite his serious misgivings about all of this. Reaping is a death sentence in the end and they all know it, but if it’s what Dean wants to do then Sam will go along for the ride.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning when Dean gets up he has a heavy feeling in his heart, but he pushes past it and rises from his bed to go make breakfast. He finds Sam already in the kitchen, scrambling eggs and searing off a piece of elk meat. The kitchen smells like the coffee Bobby’s started bringing them. It’s old, but the airtight seals have held and so, it’s fine; a little weak in flavor sometimes, but that’s about all. Coffee is something they’ve both come to love, too, so it’s damn nice of Bobby to share his stock with them. Dean’s staring at Sam and breathing in the scents of breakfast when Sam glances over his shoulder and raises an eyebrow at him.

“I was wondering if I was gonna have to come wake your ass up,” he says. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us and we need to leave soon if we want to catch Bobby before he leaves.”

Dean blinks and only then does he actually look around. His quick scan of the kitchen shows him Sam’s duffel, packed and ready to go, resting at the end of the table. Beside it is an empty knapsack that Dean knows is for putting books in.

Turning back to Sam who’s taking the piece of elk off the burner, Dean asks, “Really?”

Sam doesn’t look at him, but he nods. “Yeah, really.”

Dean grins and goes over to slap his shoulders and then give them a squeeze. “I knew you’d change your mind,” he says. He knew no such thing, but he really, really _hoped_ Sam would. 

Sam just plates up some eggs, cuts off a hunk of the elk that’s still sizzling faintly in the skillet and shoves the plate at Dean. “Let’s eat breakfast, but then we gotta go. I’ve already turned Bessie out to graze and watered all of them, so we’re good on that front.”

“Awesome,” Dean says as he goes to sit down.

“Uh-huh,” Sam says blandly as he sits down across from Dean. He stabs at his eggs with a frown. “ _Awesome_.”

“Hey, if you don’t want to come then you can stay here, man,” Dean says. “We already discussed that.”

“Shut up, Dean, I’m going and that’s that,” Sam says. He stuffs a fork full of eggs in his mouth before getting up to get them both some coffee. He’s so distracted he almost forgot the best part of breakfast (and lunch… and supper… and midday…).

“Dick,” Dean mutters, but he’s grinning behind Sam’s back again. “You better not bitch the whole way there. I will throw you out.”

“Right,” Sam says as he comes back to the table with their coffee. “Because you do that _all the time_.”

“First time for everything, Sammy,” Dean tells him. His mood this morning is downright buoyant.

“You got that right,” Sam says. He sounds a bit more morose about it all. Then again, his mood is nowhere close to approaching _buoyant_. He can do this though and he does take some comfort in that. He takes even more comfort in knowing that Dean will have someone there to look out for him now.

Sam straightens his head up and squares his shoulders, stiffening his posture to keep any _hint_ of a head tilt out of it. It’s been mostly gone for about a year, but he needs to be conscious of it now more than ever since they’re going _out there_ again. To slip and cock his head while in the middle of reaping is about the worst thing he could ever do. Sam has excellent posture now, ramrod straight, but for the first time in a good while he’s worried about it coming back.

Dean notices what he’s doing and bumps his foot under the table. “You’ll be fine, it’ll all be fine. You’ll see.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, but he nods and then sips his coffee before turning his full attention back to his breakfast. He sure as hell hopes Dean’s right about that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby is surprised to see them when they show up at his front door. He’s even more surprised to find out _why_ they’re there. He doesn’t give them a lot of grief about it, only makes sure they’re sure and then he shrugs.

“Well, I reckon we need to get a move on then,” he says as he closes the tailgate on his truck. “Don’t want ‘em starting the party without us.”

“Nope,” Dean says. He’s practically bouncing he’s so keyed up and ready to go. They’ve gotten some more gas from Bobby with the stern admonishment that if they’re going to be Reapers fulltime now then they need to start getting their own fuel. Dean figures they can do that fine, they know how to forage really damned well after all. 

Sam says little the whole time they’re at Bobby’s and he’s even quieter once they’re on the road again. It’s a smooth ride, the roads in relatively good repair aside from weather damage in a few places. Years ago, back when there were still enough people to do it and the organization to accomplish it, the roads were cleared of stalled out vehicles. Now those same vehicles line the roadways on either side, some no more than five or six feet away and others out in the slowly encroaching forest. The wink of dirty glass and chrome sparkles up out of the tree line and catches in Sam’s eyes even with a pair of old sunglasses on. It’s like watching hundreds of camera flashes exploding from behind the leaves of trees and out of the grass. Paparazzi ghosts come to catch a few shots of the Reapers, the celebrities everyone fears.

That fear keeps them safe, their mythology keeps them safer. It’s not a good idea to travel much anymore, at least not alone and, since that’s how most people choose to live, most people stay on their plots of land where it’s relatively safe. Reapers can travel though; they’ve got controlling interest in gasoline and weapons, after all. Even without those things people would still hesitate to try and rob a man or woman wearing all black. If they kill a Reaper, maybe other Reapers will come and burn them alive just because they overstepped. That may or may not be true, no one knows for sure because no one has ever had the balls to test that theory. There are plenty of stories out there that say otherwise, however.

People, in their unending, foolish need for the companionship of others need the Reapers, too. It’s another reason people have never risen up against them. In some places, people even worship them. It’s a smalltime thing for now, little groups of those who have truly gone mad building bonfires in the name of the Reapers, but one day it will spread. One day the Reapers will become a religion unto themselves, every one of them that strikes a match or lays a fuse will be a priest of some higher deity; some King Reaper. Someone will find the name _Thanatos_ in a book and because that someone is plucky and ambitious, they will use that name for the King Reaper. Please recycle, as the saying goes. It’ll do its intended duty though and that person will become a prophet among the Reaper cults. It’s some seriously insane shit, but that’s a good decade away for now.

Besides, it’s just history and humanity doing what it’s always done. If they didn’t do it then nothing interesting would ever happen. After all, that’s how mythology is created and how men become gods.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Dayton is a hulking monolith on the horizon, a gutted-out wreck of civilization that still stands because its concrete and steel doesn’t have the sense to simply crumble. The rioters in the early days of the plague, and the years themselves, have been unkind to the city and its streets are empty and pockmarked. Someone tried to burn part of it a long time ago, but they did a bad job and only scorch marks and couple of burnt-out tract houses remain as a testament to that fact.

Large cities like this are always scarier than the tiny places no one really cares about or remembers. Echoes of the lives that once thrived along their streets clang around in the wind as it howls through them, moaning its way through busted out windows to twist out across the next street over. The scraps of lives lost or abandoned in the waves of exodus from the cities lie around moldering and sad looking for anyone who walks through them to see. _There used to be life here,_ those relics seem to say. A broken china pot, a doll’s headless body, a toy fire engine with flaking red paint, a woman’s dress that is suspiciously torn and a single man’s work boot. All manner of things lie around, decaying and erasing the passage of mankind through all these winding city streets to make room for nothing but the crows and cockroaches.

Sam and Dean take it all in as they follow Bobby through a quick sweep of the city before heading back to the house they found to bunk down in while they work. Cities take days to clear and burn, so a plan is needed. They’ll start the real work tomorrow morning, all of them going out in teams of two or three, each one with an area of the city to attend to on their own.

They’re burning more cities nowadays than they were in the beginning, according to Bobby, Rufus and Jodie—the ones who’ve been there from the start. People, when they congregate, still tend to go into cities. Such places are a natural draw. Sam wonders if they hear all the old echoes there because it’s in cities where they’re the loudest. This time it’s a fairly decent population, about 600 people have ended up here in Dayton and as usual, the plague has dropped in for a visit. They’ve already listened to Bobby cursing to high heaven about, _Don’t they ever_ learn _? Don’t they even care that they’re killin’ themselves?_ Sam agrees, but he’s not mad about it, just sad in a tired old way that makes him feel heavy all over.

“This place is fucking _creepy_ ,” Dean mutters as he pulls into the parking lot of a well looted old grocery store to turn around and follow Bobby back out. He shudders in his seat and grips the wheel a little tighter.

“A bit, yeah,” Sam says as he looks out his window to the endless stretches of ruin. He sees the skeletal remains of a foot poking out from behind a dumpster that’s been dragged out into the parking lot and looks away. “I still… Dean… We don’t _have_ to kill everybody.”

“I know that,” Dean says as he exits the lot again. “We only kill the sick ones.”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, I know that. Okay, fine, that didn’t come out right. What I _mean_ is that we don’t have to burn the city.”

“Dude, do you even listen when Bobby’s telling us shit?” Dean asks him. He glances over at Sam who is staring out the windshield with his jaw clenched. “They just burn the infected buildings.”

“One; yes, I do listen and two; I also hear him when he says that sometimes _the fires still spread_ ,” Sam says. “We don’t need to burn towns or cities or even one or two buildings, not anymore, _that_ is what I am trying to tell you. All we need to do is burn _bodies_ now. There aren’t enough people to even make the other stuff important and a pyre is easier to keep an eye on and contain than a ten story apartment building. Not to mention, it conserves resources, which is a hell of a lot more practical than torching anything bigger than a couple hundred corpses.”

Dean mulls it over and agrees with Sam; he makes a damn good point. “Okay, you sold me, but we still need a way to get the bodies all in one place. I’m not real fond of the idea of dragging corpses through the streets and we’re damn sure not putting them in the trunk.”

“We’ll have to haul some of them, there’s no way around it,” Sam says. “As for the rest… there are still some healthy people out there, even in places where it gets really bad.”

“Your point being what?” Dean asks.

Sam turns to look at Dean and says, “Well, we can always ask them to bring us the bodies. And look, I know you don’t like the idea, but if we had some way to haul them, like a trailer or something then we can do that, too.”

Dean sighs and then he nods. “Yeah, yeah, alright, Poindexter. We can try. Let’s run it by Bobby when we get settled in tonight and if he’s on board then we can talk to the others tomorrow. Deal?”

“Deal,” Sam says.

He leans back in his seat then and relaxes a fraction. He’s still wound too tight, still doesn’t want to be here—he’s well fucking aware of what happened last time he went out with Reapers and he didn’t even go _into_ that place. This may be a start though, a better way to deal with things now that the overall population has thinned out. It can save the cities and the woodlands and maybe, _maybe_ one day things will be better. If that ever happens then Sam thinks it’ll be good if people have somewhere left to go.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The plague knows the Reapers are in Dayton. It watched them drive in and have a look around. They’re in its city and it knows very well what they’re planning on doing to it. The plague is utterly livid about the idea and don’t even get it started on how it feels about the eventuality that’s coming tomorrow. Goddamn it all to fucking hell, _it just got here_!

They’re more organized these days, they have better ways of keeping touch though be damned if the plague knows how that is. Maybe it’s homing pigeons, it did catch a glimmer of something like that in a Reaper it took a few months back. It doesn’t particularly care _how_ they’re doing it though, only that they _are_. The Reapers are ruining all of the plague’s fun and it is spitting mad.

There are even slimmer pickings for it now than there were two years ago and the plague does so love a party. It waits for these wondrous opportunities like a kid waiting for Christmas. But oh _noooo_ , the Reapers have to come along and piss all over the plague’s parade _every time_. It glares at them from its hiding places in the shadows of Dayton, watches them combing through the streets it has walked for barely a month now and it hates them with a venomous kind of fury. This will never do, enough is enough; it is time for the Fat Lady to sing, etc., _ad infinitum_.

It’s been trying to come up with a plan since the Reapers burned Chicago and it really started applying itself when they wiped out Seattle. At last it finally thinks it has come up with something. It feels pretty dumb now that it’s had the idea; the answer was there all along and it was too close to really see it. Well, that’s over and part of the past, now it knows and it’s time for it to get to work on the humans that aren’t so sick they’re useless to it.

The plague has the keys to the kingdom, if you will. Except maybe that isn’t right; it never has been good at analogies, especially not cliché ones. It will allow, however, that it has all the necessary talents to make it a mighty fine puppet master if it fine-tunes its skills some. The ability to disturb the nervous system has always been part of its repertoire, except for that weird little bit of time where it seemed to have forgotten that. It pauses to wonder: Could senility be a reality even for organisms such as itself?

Point being, it can do this if it really tries hard enough, it feels confident on that matter. It’s better acquainted with the wiring in the human machine than even the most brilliant of scientists. It knows what each and every switch does, how to tap each main line, where to poke each button, where to prod each… Well, it doesn’t know _what_ there is to prod, which means there’s nothing. If the plague could laugh, it would spend a fair amount of time keeping itself it stitches. Its jokes are _hilarious_.

Tomorrow is no laughing matter though and it needs to concentrate. The dark nighttime hours are the best time for it to work. It has always made a mess of its forays into the nervous system before. Mostly because it was so distracted with learning other things: History, literature, mathematics, secrets, sexual positions, gossip—humans, even the most boring of the lot, are wellsprings of information. Now there is no time for that even though the plague is as curious as it has always been. It’s going to miss learning all of the wonderful things people know.

The plague knows it is considered the villain of the story, it always has been and it is wounded by the assumption. It does not want to be humanity’s arch-nemesis after all, but it understands how killing them off like it does would be viewed with a healthy dose of... It mulls over which word to use for a while and at last settles on _distaste_. That’s a much nicer word that _repugnance_ or _revulsion_ at any rate.

It will champion its cause though, because there is a much larger purpose to what it does. It wipes the slate clean(ish) and makes room for things to start over again. The plague is part of the natural order of things, the little-huge street sweeper that comes to set the record straight. There was no fire rained down from a flaming sword ever, there was only the plague wandering along and following directions that come from no source other than within itself. Funny how that works, but it’s pretty sure someone—maybe something—else put it there, like it was made this way with great intent. It’s something to think about anyway, what with life and there being a circle and all that jolly good shit.

When the Reapers have finally cleared out, it skulks off into the night to fiddle around in the human bodies it is occupying. Tomorrow will tell if its plan really yields any fruit, but it is hopeful that its stand won’t, well, _fall_. It’s part of that eternal optimist thing it has going on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day the Reapers gather and Bobby proposes Sam’s plan to them. There are grumbles at first from a few, but most of them agree rather quickly. They’re tired of burning whole towns and cities off the face of creation, too. It’s exhausting work and it’s _sad_ work. It’s also, a few of them admit to their secret selves, _addictive_ work.

Fire has a way of pulling at some people; whispering in their ears and making them want bigger flames, hotter heat. It tempts them to come closer and have a look. It asks to be touched. It is terrifying and if not for self-control there are a few in the group that know they would’ve tried to tango with flame because it is simply that seductive. If they can scale it down, make it smaller and faster then maybe they can stop testing (tempting) fate.

Since most of the Reapers own trucks, they agree to throw down tarps in the truck beds to haul bodies. They’re so used to death and decay by now that it’s not such a hardship and the bed of a truck can be washed. Those with Jeeps or cars are exempt because the stink of rotting flesh would never come out of them.

Having located the clusters of survivors, most of which are bunked in what was once an affluent part of town (that’s almost always the case because everyone wants a chance to live in a mansion, even if only for a little while) they all set out in their little groups. One person drives and two or three others stand in the beds of the trucks while other groups go on foot. They all call out to the pallid faces peering at them from windows and peepholes. They ask that the healthy give them the bodies and they say if there is anyone sick inside the house that they be notified. The Reapers on foot go door to door if no one comes outside and kick them in or pick the locks.

Sam and Dean pace alongside Bobby’s truck, looking for houses that suggest someone is or has been living there. It was late last night and they may have missed something. Someone a street over is calling out, “We want the bodies, bring us the bodies!”

That doesn’t sit well with Sam, it sounds wrong and kind of perverse if he thinks about it too much. It’s proving hard to know _what_ to say or _how_ to say it. This part should be the easiest part, but so far only a few people have opened their doors and allowed the Reapers inside. Only one person has brought them a body. He tries to think of what to say because if this doesn’t work out soon then they’re going to start back right where they were since that method is tried and true.

“Oh,” he says under his breath when it occurs to him. He cups his hands around his face and raises his voice as loud as he can to be heard from behind his mask. In a single breath, Sam takes up the old chant, “Bring out your dead!”

Dean gives him a questioning look and then shrugs and starts calling out as well. A few more people catch on and soon, “Bring out your dead!” is echoing all over Dayton. Occasional honks of horns follow up the cry and it soon becomes a chorus.

It works because it’s a familiar line and a very simple request. Slowly, more people begin opening their doors and dragging bodies out for the Reapers to collect.

“What will you do with them?” one man asks as Sam and Dean load the body of his daughter into the truck.

“Burn them,” Dean says.

“Oh,” the man says. He’s weeping silently, but he nods as he backs away. “I’m not sick,” he adds, holding up his hands as though trying to ward them off. “I’m not.”

“Then pack up and get out,” Bobby says as he crosses to the truck, dragging another body by its heels. “You’ve got ‘til sundown or we’ll move you ourselves.”

“O-okay,” the man says. He wipes his wet face then raises his hands again.

“Don’t join up with another group again either, you understand?” Bobby asks him. “If you’d stayed away from others…” He trails off, not so cruel that he’s willing to finish the sentence.

The man gets his meaning though and nods. “I will,” he says. “I just… We… It’s so _lonely_.”

“That it is, but it’s the best way for you to stay alive,” Bobby tells him. “Now go on.”

The man spares one last glance at the wrapped bundle that was his daughter. “Take care of her,” he says before turning away.

“We will,” Sam says as he watches him go.

Bobby tugs on the bill of his cap and frowns down at his dusty boots. “Damned morons,” he says. He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds incredibly sad about it. 

“We got another one,” Dean says. He jerks his chin at a woman staggering down the sidewalk toward them with what looks like two bodies wrapped up in a big down comforter.

“Crap,” Bobby says. To the woman, he says, “Stay there, miss, we’ll come to you.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Four streets over, Jo and Ellen are doing their door-to-door duty when they find a house that is locked, but a peek through the window shows dishes on the table. The food is buzzing with flies, but it’s not that old, which means that someone has been living here. Someone who is probably now dead.

Ellen sighs and pushes her hair out of her face. “Get the lock, baby girl,” she tells Jo. “I’m thinking we’ve got bodies in there.”

“Sure,” Jo says. She pulls out her lock picks and gets to work.

It doesn’t take them long and they slip inside. The stench of ripening flesh is cloying and they choke on it, gagging softly as they move further into the house. They find the first body, bloated and bloody on the living room sofa, and find yet another sitting on the toilet in the downstairs half-bath. The body is leaning to the left, propped against the wall and Jo wrinkles her nose as she backs out of the room.

“I found another one,” she calls to Ellen who is making her way upstairs.

Jo sees movement out of the corner of her eye and turns in time to see a man bearing down on her. The side of his neck is grossly misshapen with a bubo and his eyes are wild as he charges at her. He’s making gurgling, slobbery sounds that sound a lot like, _No_ and _You don’t_ , but Jo isn’t sure. She raises her gun to shoot, but she’s too slow and he’s on her, arms wrapping around her in a clumsy, stinking hug. He bites the side of her face and she screams then and again louder when he stabs her with a long Philip’s head screwdriver. The tool sinks into her side and she feels it pierce something quivering and soft and her scream chokes off on a low moan.

Ellen jumps on the man’s back, furious as she yells, “Get off my daughter you sonofabitch!”

She has her boot knife in hand and she stabs him around the head and neck until he wheels away from Jo who stumbles back and into a wall where she slides down it. The man slams into the opposite wall, knocking the wind out of Ellen, but she doesn’t let him go. She manages to snake one arm around his swollen neck and when she squeezes as hard as she can, he bellows with pain and drops to his knees.

Ellen scrambles off his back before he hits the floor and steps around to face him. He’s wheezing and making more slobbering sounds, this time they sound like he’s saying, _Got you_. Ellen’s blood runs cold when he tilts his head back and smiles at her. She’s seen the crazy ones before, she’d swear sometimes that it seems like her and Jo catch the lion’s share of them, but she’s never seen that kind of alien intelligence in their eyes: a kind of curious, yet cold, malevolence. This man hates them, but in the split second before she pulls the trigger, Ellen has the weirdest feeling it’s not a man looking at her at all. He’s laughing when his mouth disappears in a spray of blood and splintered teeth.

“Mama.” Jo’s voice is weak and Ellen whips around to find her trying to push herself up from the floor. “Mom,” she says again as she starts to cry. She loses her balance and hits the floor again with a thump.

“Baby, oh, no,” Ellen says as she goes to her. “Don’t do that. _Jo, don’t!_ ” Jo has her fingers wrapped around the handle of the screwdriver buried in her side and even as Ellen grabs for her, she pulls it out. Ellen can’t help the moaning cry of pain that comes up from her throat as she watches the blood spurt from the hole in her daughter’s side.

“That’s better,” Jo slurs as she slides further down the wall.

“No, no, no,” Ellen moans as she scrambles to place her hands over the wound.

Jo’s blood pumps hot and thick against her palms and runs through the seams of her fingers. Even as she applies pressure, Ellen feels the spurts slowing and slowing, which means Jo’s heart is coming to a stop. Which means her baby girl is dying and Ellen sobs, choking back a scream as she grabs Jo and holds her close. She wouldn’t have survived that wound, maybe not even back when there were more doctors and well equipped hospitals, but she would’ve had a chance. If those things still existed though, Ellen and Jo would’ve never been in this place to begin with. _This would not have happened_.

“Mama?” Jo mutters.

“What, baby? What is it?” Ellen asks. She picks her head up to look at Jo, but she’s gone, her dark eyes fixed and staring at nothing, at everything.

Ellen picks her daughter up and staggers under the weight of her, but she refuses to put her down and drag her. No, she will carry Jo like she did when she was a baby, like she did when Jo was just a clump of cells growing in her belly. This is the last chance she will ever have to do so and she won’t miss it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The plague watches from the eyes of a dying rabbit as Ellen Harvelle carries her dead daughter out into the street and calls for Rufus to come back and help her. The truck makes u-turn and the plague rejoices, making the rabbit’s feet kick and flail in the hedgerow it has collapsed in.

Its plan worked! Quite frankly, the plague thinks it is genius. Next time it hopes there are even more bodies for it to ferret around in. Right now it only has two left to play with and while that’s not a lot of fun, it’s a start. It can fight back now. Hurrah!

~*~*~*~*~*~

The new plan works out really well, but it is still a strange and tragic day. They lose Jo and another man named John E. takes his own life after a woman with pneumonic plague rips his mask off and coughs all over him.

“I swear the bitch was laughing,” he tells Bobby from the cracked window he’s speaking through. “Either way, I’m done for, man, so if you don’t mind.” He shows Bobby the gun in his hand and Bobby frowns before stepping back and turning around. The crack of the gunshot still makes him jump.

They have to burn that house because the risk of infection inside is still too great, but it’s only one house instead of a few dozen. In that regard it is a success, but Ellen’s tear-streaked face and hollowed out eyes temper any pleasure they’d have taken from their plan succeeding.

Jodie gets a nasty crack on the back of the skull in another house. Like John E. and Ellen, when she’s back to herself enough to talk much, she says she thinks the kid—a twelve year old boy—was _laughing_ at her. 

“I know some of them go crazy, but that was too damned weird,” Jodie says to Rufus while he’s stitching up the back of her head.

“And coincidental,” Rufus says. He tells Jodie about John E. and Ellen, too.

“That is bizarre,” Jodie says. She looks at the pyre some of the others are working to build. “I wonder what the hell that was all about.”

“I don’t know, but I tell you, it don’t sound real good to me,” Rufus says. “Does it sound good to you?”

“No,” Jodie says. Her frown deepens. “Not at all.”

“Mhmm,” Rufus says then he shushes her when she winces as he pulls a stitch tighter.

“When’re we lighting them up?” she asks.

“Soon,” Rufus says. “Just a few more bodies left in the trucks then it’s go-time.”

“Good,” Jodie says.

She sneers faintly and lightly touches her blood-stiffened hair. She casts a glance toward Ellen who’s watching it all with far away eyes, arms wrapped around herself. Jo’s body is in the back of their Jeep, Ellen’s taking her home to be buried. Jodie feels damned sorry for Ellen. She’s lost everything to the plague now. Then again, so have the rest of them. It doesn’t make Jo’s senseless death any less sad though.

A little while later, Bobby calls out, “Let’s light it up!” and the Reapers all come forward with their preferred incendiary devices in hand. It’s a morbid procession, but a necessary one and their grimy faces are set and hard as they each take up a spot by one of the three pyres set up in the parking lot of what used to be an elementary school. 

They all stand back out of respect as Ellen steps forward and strikes the first match. She throws it on the center pile and the Reapers all bow their heads for her. It’s like a benediction and once she’s stepped back, the others step forward to throw their own matches or touch the flames of their lighters to a twisted piece of paper. One by one the pyres go up with a _whoosh_ and the late evening sky is lit up with orange-yellow-red dancing light that is courted by thick grey smoke.

Everyone watches and pretends the stinking smell of scorching flesh, the sizzling hiss of melting fat and the pop of bone and wood is really music. A shower of embers spits into the air and some of them fall onto Sam’s hand, leaving little stinging red kisses all over his flesh. He doesn’t really notice, mostly he’s trying not to throw up. Beside him, Dean wipes his watering eyes and lightly bumps Sam’s shoulder.

“We did alright, I think,” he says.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

Dean had to shoot two people and Sam shot one. He nearly lost his nerve, but in the end he snapped out of it. He’s still not able to close his eyes without seeing the man’s face floating up out of the darkness. It’ll fade away with time, he’s sure and all the rest that follow will be easier than the first. At least that’s what he’s been told. They have new books and some new clothes and one sack of coffee, so there’s that and he’s pleased for a moment.

Then he looks over at Ellen and remembers this is not a happy day at all. He never did like Jo very much, but he knew her and he knows her mother and it’s damn sad regardless of his feelings for her. Dean’s broken up about it, too, but much like Sam he doesn’t know what to say to Ellen and so they say nothing at all. They both feel pretty shitty about that, but there’s nothing to be done and no words to soothe her hurt.

Sam’s plan was a success, but watching Ellen in the dancing shadows of the flames, Sam thinks it’s a pyrrhic victory, which isn’t much of a victory at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They make it back to Blue Shoe in time for Sam’s birthday, but he’s so preoccupied with the dead man’s face and Ellen’s sad silhouette while she watched the pyres he doesn’t actually notice. There is fire writhing, sinuous and serpentine in his dreams, licking at his fingers like a hot, dry dog’s tongue. They go inside and crash out after bathing with only a nod goodnight (morning) to each other. There are weightier things on their minds than chit-chat.

When he wakes it is dusk, the sky turning indigo and purple outside his window and painting his bedroom with the elongated shadows of the evergreens beyond the lawn. Sam yawns and rolls over, he doesn’t like waking up to see out the window and wishes he’d thought to close his curtains that morning before bed. He hears Dean thumping around in the house, probably cooking an early supper or putting away vegetables. They’ve been gone for days, so there’s plenty to be done and caught up on. He means to get up and ask if there’s anything he can help with because undoubtedly there is, but instead he closes his eyes _for just a second_.

The next thing he knows it’s fully dark in his room and Dean is banging on his door. “Dude, _wake up_!” he calls through the blond pine. “Seriously, Sam, what the hell? We got celebrating to do!”

“Huh?” Sam asks as he rolls out of bed and goes to open the door. He looks into Dean’s smiling face and grunts when he shoves a quart mason jar full of moonshine at him.

“Drink this,” he says. “You’re a man now, Sammy. Happy birthday!”

“Shit, I forgot,” Sam says. He gives the moonshine a dubious look. He’s tasted it before and thought it was going to burn the taste buds right off his tongue. “Ah…”

“Legal drinking age, man, c’mon, loosen up some,” Dean says. He grabs Sam’s sleeve and tugs him out of the doorway. “Come eat. I made _cake_.”

“Uh-oh,” Sam says.

“What do you mean ‘uh-oh‘? My cake is awesome,” Dean says. “I used up the rest of the sugar making it and the frosting, but that cocoa was a lucky find, so it’s cool.”

Sam’s a little worried and a lot curious to see what Dean’s cake looks like, but he’s game and so he goes along behind him. 

The cake is a lopsided disaster with one of their old white candles jammed into the middle of it, but it makes Sam smile anyway. “Thanks, Dean,” he says as he sits down at the table. He pushes the jar of moonshine away from himself a bit, like it may bite him at any moment.

Dean sees him and rolls his eyes, but he lights the candle and says, “Make a wish.”

Sam echoes the eye roll, but he can’t help another smile either as he dutifully closes his eyes and tries to think of something, anything to wish for. What comes to him makes him bite the inside of his cheek because _no_ , but it’s all he’s got. So, he keeps it because it is true.

Sam blows out his candle and Dean claps and takes a slug from his jar of moonshine. Sam wonders how much of it he’s drank already, but figures it doesn’t really matter as he watches Dean cut him off a hunk of crooked cake.

The cake looks like a nightmare, but it actually tastes really good and when he asks, Dean points to a cookbook laying on the counter. “I was busy while you were zonked out,” he says.

“I see that,” Sam says.

“Eat your cake and drink your ‘shine, man,” Dean says. “This is a milestone birthday, like turning 16 or 18… or 40.”

Sam’s sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays weren’t much of anything to comment on. He got sick not long after his sixteenth birthday and aside from a _happy birthday_ from Dean, there wasn’t much to it. Same goes for his eighteenth, but apparently 21 is the magic number in Dean’s book and so, Sam unscrews the lid on his jar and takes a small sip.

“God, it’s awful,” he says as he swallows it down. There’s the burning, almost bitter taste of the moonshine itself, but beneath that is the faint taste of rosemary and mint. Bobby steam distills his oils and his moonshine still is near the oil still, so things mix and mingle a bit.

“I like it,” Dean says.

“I think you like to drink,” Sam says.

Dean grins, unrepentant. “Yep, there’s that, too.” He raises his jar in a toast to Sam.

Sam snorts and raises his own jar back. They lightly clink the mouths of the jars together before drinking again. “Woo,” Sam says when he can catch his breath again.

“Right?” Dean says.

“Ugh,” is Sam’s reply, but like a good birthday boy, he lifts his jar for another swig. It is his birthday after all and he’s never had a party, not really, at least not that he can remember. He figures he may as well make the best of it.

A few hours later, Sam’s mason jar is half empty and he’s drunker than a piss-ant for the first time in his life. He’s sitting out on the back porch with Dean, listening to the night sounds and enjoying his first bout of drunken introspection. Never before has he sounded so eloquent in his own head, he’s damn near a professor he’s feeling so smart right now. If that’s what moonshine can do for a person then he doesn’t know why he’s not drinking all the time.

“How ya doin’ over there?” Dean asks him.

“Hmm? Oh,” Sam says. He nods and his head feels like it’s filled with helium and still somehow is _very_ heavy. It’s kind of a neat feeling and he tips his head forward in a slow nod again to try it out.

“Sam?” Dean says.

“What?”

“I asked how you’re doin’ over there.”

“Right, um… I’m good, dude. Like… really fucking good,” Sam says. For some reason that strikes him as funny. “Awesome,” he adds when he’s got his laughter under control.

Dean laughs right along with him as he gently rocks his chair. “Cool.”

“You’re drunk,” Sam says. He points at Dean and nods again—that is so much fun, wow.

“Am not,” Dean says (he very much is). “But you totally are.”

“Fuck you, man, no way,” Sam says.

“Way,” Dean insists.

Sam says nothing more on the matter. He was thinking about something else before Dean interrupted him and now he’s sidetracked trying to remember what it was. When he remembers he slides back into his introspective thinking and frowns to himself.

Dean rouses him from his chair a little while later and they stumble and sway their way back into the house. Sam’s still thinking, although the few sips of moonshine he’s had since he got back to that seem to have done away with his eloquence. Now his thoughts are kind of hard to keep track of, they keep drifting off _over there_ somewhere, trying to elude him. Sam doesn’t appreciate that one bit. He wants his goddamned eloquence back.

Dean thumps into the side of the table and grumbles under his breath before checking his jar of ‘shine to make sure it’s okay. Satisfied it is, he drinks again in celebration before looking at Sam to check on him. Sam’s looking off at nothing, swaying in place like a tree in a soft breeze and blinking slowly.

“Penny for your—” Dean hiccups and then tries again. “Penny for your thoughts? There. Got it.”

Sam gives him a sad look of consternation, his mouth twisting down on one side as his eyebrows knit together. “I was just thinking that I’m twenty one years old…”

“Yeah,” Dean confirms. “And?”

“And I’m still a virgin,” Sam spits out. “I’ve never even kissed anybody. Do you have any idea how massively unfair and fucked up that is?” Then he cocks his head—in thought, not out of habit—looks at Dean and says, “Whoa. That’s right.” He grins a little bit and bounces slightly. Dean knows what he’s getting at. It’s not a state secret, but still… _damnit_.

“No way,” Dean protests. Even drunk he can feel the heat creeping up his neck and over his cheeks. He’s never had much of a chance. He’s pretty sure him and Jo could’ve had a little something going on if time and distance had allowed for it. As it was, he only ever saw her at burns and there was no room or privacy for _anything_ other than the job. He still won’t admit to it though. “I’ve banged lots of chicks.”

Sam grunts and finally starts moving. “When, in your dreams? You are so full of shit. I’m going to sit in the living room.”

Dean starts to argue and wonders what him being full of shit has to do with the living room, but then decides to let Sam have that one. He follows him into the living room and sits on the couch next to Sam. He’s staring at Barkley and Dean stares with him for a little while. He really likes that dog a lot, he’s a good boy.

“It just, I’m telling you, Dean, it really _sucks_ ,” Sam says.

Dean jumps and wonders what the hell he’s talking about, but then he remembers. “Yeah, I know, Sammy,” he says. “It kinda does suck the big one.”

“It sucks the _biggest_ one,” Sam says. He’s frowning down into his jar of moonshine as he says it. With a sigh, he takes another swallow. It’s going down way easier now that he’s gotten used to it.

“It’ll be okay,” Dean says.

Sam scoffs. “I really don’t think so,” he says after a minute. “Nope. Don’t think soooo.”

“Maybe,” Dean says.

“Nope,” Sam says.

He is adamantly pessimistic about this. He can’t help it though, it’s about the most goddamned depressing thing he’s thought about in a long time. To never wake up beside someone he cares about or kiss them or even hold their hand… His life promises to be a long stretch of loneliness and masturbation. Sam doesn’t think anyone could call that a good time.

Dean watches Sam from the corner of his eye and frowns. He knows what Sam’s thinking, he’s thought it before himself. He has other things to worry about than finding a date on Saturday night though; they both do. Sometimes it can get really damned lonesome though, sleeping in an empty bed, waking up in an empty bed and doing it all over again the next day.

They both have their creeping little secrets, pictures that slink into their dreams unwelcome and so tempting. It’s a hurty kind of want though, one that leaves them both shaking with shame sometimes even in their sleep. It’s worse when the dreams go too far and they wake up out of breath, sweaty hair stuck to their temples and a mess to clean up. It lives in their gut, separate and together in both of them, barely acknowledged when they’re awake because they don’t know what to do with it; don’t know if there’s anything they _can_ do with it.

Emotions are messy, complicated things that stick to the surface of everything with a kind of steadfast reluctance to let go. Sometimes the best thing to do is leave them to fester or ignore them in hopes they’ll go away. The wisest thing to do is always, _always_ keep your mouth shut when the object of your affection is your closest living relative and best friend.

Dean’s always been responsible (mostly) and highly dependable (again: mostly, everybody slips) but he has never been wise and moonshine only makes him less so. His brother frowning in the light of the hurricane lamp makes him want to _fix it_ if he can and thanks to the sluggish heat of alcohol in his veins, he doesn’t think much past that.

So, when he says, “I’ll kiss you if you want to be kissed,” he’s not thinking much past that and for half a second in the liquor haze and bad light, he forgets they’re even related. He does not, for one minute, consider that Sam may punch him in the fucking face or look at him like he just confessed to having an… ahem… _thing_ with Bessie.

Thing is, he’s at least kissed someone—a girl named Cassie back when they first moved to Sioux Falls. They kissed a lot, too, like five or six times before John started working them like dogs and then Dean kind of drifted out of Cassie’s orbit. He’s had that much though and Sam, if he’s being honest, really might never get to kiss anyone at all. The world is even more different now than it was back then when the plague was only getting started. That and if Dean is honest with himself—he typically refuses to be, thanks so much—he really wants to kiss Sam. He kind of wants to be the only person to ever kiss Sam. He’s an ace liar though, so that’s something easily ignored.

“What? No,” Sam says.

He shifts a little in his seat and eyeballs Dean. He has to squint a little to bring his face into focus, but when he does, there’s Dean, front and center. He thinks Dean looks a little disappointed, but maybe that’s the light. Sam does want to kiss Dean, but he doesn’t want weirdness between them and kissing one’s brother is a straight shot down the path to Weirdsville.

“Okay, I was just offering, ya know so… so you wouldn’t feel bad about never being kissed,” Dean mutters. He sips from his moonshine jar again and looks away from Sam.

“I know and ah… Thanks,” Sam says.

This is fucking awkward. Even drunk this is _fucking awkward_. Sam doesn’t like it and now Dean’s fidgeting and looking a little—no, scratch that, a _lot_ —ashamed of himself. And Sam just lied like a motherfucker to him, too. Is that the right thing to do when someone finally offers the one thing you’ve spent a disturbing amount of time thinking about? If so, if you cross that bridge, are you sure that’s the best thing to do? Sam asks himself: _Is this really an apple I want a bite of?_

Thing is, Sam’s never had much use for religion or the devil or anything in between. He likes the apple metaphor, but that’s about it and the answer he comes to in his booze-dragging thought process is: _Yes, yes I do._

“I changed my mind,” Sam says. “Kiss me.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Okay, um… How you wanna do this?”

“Dude, I don’t know, just… _kiss me_ ,” Sam says. “Hurry up before we lose our nerve.”

“My nerve is fine,” Dean says.

“Sure, right, whatever,” Sam says and huffs out a breath. “Which is exactly why you’re—” he stops to burp softly. “—stalling.”

“Stall my ass,” Dean says. Now is not the time to get belligerent, he reminds himself.

Sam groans and puts his jar of ‘shine on the end table with the very careful movements of the soundly inebriated and leans forward to mash his lips against Dean’s. Their teeth crack together and Dean’s teeth scrape Sam’s bottom lip, but it’s a step in the right direction… as soon as Sam’s sure none of his teeth are broken.

“Dude!” Dean says. “I am supposed to be kissing you, not the other way around.”

Sam’s running his tongue over his teeth, checking for damages, but he stops when Dean says that. “Then come the fuck on, man.”

“Fine,” Dean snarls.

Finally, he does it and it’s sloppy as hell, all tongue and spit, but Sam’s belly still flips in a good way when Dean curls his fingers in his hair. When they pull apart, they’re both flushed and their mouths are shiny with (way too much) spit.

“So?” Dean asks. “Tell me the truth.”

Sam thinks for a second, but thinking is harder now than it was even after his eloquence abandoned him so cruelly. So, he actually does tell the truth. “It’s not like the books say it’s supposed to be.”

“Well… the books are full of shit,” Dean says. “I know what I’m doing.” He puffs himself up a little bit, trying to save face. Still, _ouch_. He makes a mental note to remember that sometimes _truth hurts_.

Sam looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “No, you don’t.”

Dean doesn’t dignify that with a response, but he does think about it. He’s read some of those same books and magazine articles, but it was a while ago and he doesn’t revisit things the way Sam does. So, much to his chagrin, he’s forgotten what were apparently some valuable lessons. “Okay, fine, how do the _books_ say to do it?”

Sam thinks for a minute, rifling through all the articles he’s read in old _Cosmopolitan_ and _Seventeen_ magazines. There was a really good one in some magazine called _Sassy_ that he read until the ink was smudged lightly on the pages. He’s read the articles—all of the articles—and he knows Dean has read some, too. It’s easier read than done though and it’s extra difficult when he’s so fucking drunk that thinking is hard anyway, much less trying to explain an alien concept like kissing to Dean.

Finally, he says, “Um… They say to do it slower and not as slobbery. Oh and um… Not so much tongue.”

“That’s it?” Dean asks.

“No, that’s not _it_ , but it’s the basic…” Sam clumsily rolls his hand in the air. “It’s the ah… Shit. Wait. It’s the _gist_ of it. I think.”

“You think?”

“Dean.”

“Fine, let’s try your… vague… way,” Dean says.

“Fine,” Sam says.

So, they kiss again and it’s still clumsy, only slow motion clumsy unlike the clash and crack of teeth it was before. They bump noses, graze each others cheeks with moist lips that are off course and they get frustrated. Stubborn men never know when to quit though. It’s the same for kissing as it is learning how to skin a deer.

They gradually work it out and when their tongues finally slide together right, it makes them both shiver. The urge to rush is there, to turn it into that juvenile, almost frantic, mess it was before, but Sam cups Dean’s face in his big hands to slow them both down and it works. The rasp of Dean’s stubble against his palms is one of the most amazing sounds Sam has ever heard. The feel of Dean’s fingers, callused and with the faintest lines of dirt and soot under the nails, tangling in his hair makes his breath hitch in his throat. Sam is all too aware that Dean’s fingers combing through his hair, wrapping up in the ends of it is something he could easily get used to and never want to let go of again.

They kiss for what feels like hours, the night drifting ever closer to dawn outside the windows, only breaking away from one another to pant for breath. It’s when they start to touch each other that things gradually start to become solid again, the reality of what they’re doing beginning to creep in like an unwanted guest. The exploration begins when Dean strokes his sweat-damp fingers along the smooth skin of Sam’s arm, the rough catch of calluses making his skin rise with pleasurable little goosebumps. In turn, Sam slides his hand up the back of Dean’s shirt and feels all of that soft, almost velvety skin, sliding under his palm. The way Dean leans into him more with a soft sound caught in the back of his throat makes heat bloom like an orchid inside of Sam. It makes his skin feel too tight and all he wants is more, more, _more_. 

When Dean turns his face into the side of Sam’s neck and nuzzles him gently, his lips catching on the strands of hair clinging there, Sam gasps and cradles the back of his skull; the motion instinctive and not something he could have ever learned from little magazines. Sam finds a spot behind Dean’s ear that makes him shiver and gasp, mouth opening against the side of his neck with just the softest hint of tongue against Sam’s salty skin. They move together almost without thinking about it, but that ghost, that unwanted visitor is there and it taps Dean’s shoulder first, making him pull away panting and wide-eyed.

“Sam,” he chokes out.

He stops and tries to catch his breath, but it’s hard to do. His heart is thundering in his ears and his fingers itch with the want to touch, to dive back into Sam like he could swim in him forever. They’re both sweaty and out of breath and the realization of how _good_ it feels comes down on Dean like a hammer to the head. Kissing his brother isn’t supposed to feel like that; it isn’t supposed to _happen_ , period. It has though, here tonight in their blue granite house he has tasted his brother’s mouth and it’s _wrong_.

“We have to stop,” Dean says. He makes himself scoot back to the other end of the couch, nearly falling off it in his haste. When Sam makes to follow him, he holds his hand up to stop him. “No, Sammy, this is wrong, okay? What we’re doing… we shouldn’t be.”

“It was your idea,” Sam says. He looks more hurt and confused than ashamed as he should be. He understands incest is one of those big no-nos, but for right now, maybe because of the moonshine, he doesn’t give a rat’s diseased ass about no-nos.

“Yeah, I know and I’m sorry,” Dean says. He picks up his mason jar and takes a swallow, wanting something to moisten his parched throat. “We shouldn’t have and it’s gone too far, alright? We’ve gotta stop.”

“ _Why?_ ” Sam asks. He knows though, goddamnit, he does and he hates it. Shame, slower to come to him than Dean, is slipping into the spaces between the want he still feels. He’s still lagging behind though because he’s not feeling outright guilt yet and even swaying slightly in place, Dean is the picture of it.

“You know why,” Dean says. “Don’t pretend you don’t, okay? Don’t do that.”

“Fuck,” Sam says. He turns around to look at the mantle, at Barkley and the dying embers of the fire and sighs. He sips from his own mason jar and listens to Dean echo the sound.

“I’m goin’ to bed,” Dean says after a while. “You should try and get some sleep, too.”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

Dean gets up, nearly tips over onto his face, but shakes his head and rights himself then picks up his jar of moonshine. As he walks by Sam, he reaches out like he’s going to touch him, but as Sam watches, he curls his fingers into a fist with another sigh before lurching off toward the hallway.

“G’night, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is faint and Sam decides not to answer him. He needs to get drunker and he knows Dean’s going to do the same once he’s got his door shut.

“Happy birthday to me,” Sam mutters.

He sits in the dark, covering himself with the old Lawrence quilt when the fire has died out completely. He’s drunk as shit now and still waiting for the guilt to slap him down like he’s a fly. It’s there, but it’s a faint thing, like _it’s_ the fly, buzzing around in circles inside of Sam’s head. Sam still waits… and keeps on waiting, but the kick-in-the-teeth of guilt never comes.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He wakes the next morning with Dean jostling his leg and saying, “Up and at ‘em!”

Sam groans and rolls over, his face pressing against the dusty old area rug in the living room. That makes him open his eyes because _huh?_ and he blinks down at the blue and black weave that’s blurring in front of him. A split second later his hangover catches up with him and his head _explodes_.

“I’m dying,” is the first thing he manages to say. It comes out a gasp as he closes his eyes against the drum beat of pain-pain-pain in his head.

“Nope, Sammy, you’re really living now,” Dean says. He sounds chipper about it, so chipper it kind of pisses Sam off. 

Then Dean retches softly.

“Fuck, here we go again,” he groans. Sam listens to the sound of his booted feet running through the living room to get to the front door. Soon, that’s followed by the sound of Dean puking over the porch railing.

That makes him feel a little better, but then his stomach does its own acrobat tumble and he’s up like a lurching shot to go join Dean at the porch railing. When he’s done puking, which has only made his head hurt worse, he says, “This is not living.”

“Sure… Sure it is,” Dean pants out. He retches softly and braces his hands on the porch rail in preparation should he need to barf again.

“My head is fucking killing me,” Sam says.

“My head is fine, it’s my stomach that’s got me,” Dean says. “Both ends, you know?”

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam says. “Thanks for that.”

“Welcome,” Dean says. He grins and then frowns. “I gotta go visit the john.”

“Have fun,” Sam says. Dean’s not gone ten seconds before he hurls over the porch railing again. No, Dean is full of shit, he decides because this is _not_ living. Being drunk was pretty fun though, but goddamn at how much the aftermath sucks.

He wipes his mouth and leans on the porch railing and thinks about that, but it’s hard to sort through the haze. He thinks he may have blacked out or something because he does not remember lying down on the living room floor at all. 

“Here, I brought you some water,” Dean says from behind him.

Sam jumps a little and grits his teeth against another wash of pain. It’s when he turns around and really sees Dean for the first time today that he remembers. It comes back like a tidal flood; the feel of Dean’s mouth, the sound of his breath and the way he shivered when Sam kissed that spot behind his ear. His fingers fumble when he reaches for the glass of water because he’s staring at Dean, lost in the memories that are only now coming back to him from the fog the moonshine left behind. 

“Dean,” Sam says as Dean shoves the glass into his hand and closes his fingers around it for him. “About last night…”

“No, Sam, we’re not talking about last night,” Dean says. He takes a step away from him. “Not ever again, got it?”

“Look, it’s just…”

“ _No_ , Sam.” Dean walks away from him, leaving Sam holding his glass of water and feeling like a jackass.

When he thinks he can go back inside without the need to run right back out onto the porch to barf, Sam goes to his room. Dean’s nowhere to be found, but his closed bedroom door is a good hint as to where he’s holed up. 

Sam’s faint guilt is there, steady as the ticking of a clock, but it never grows like he supposes it should. It’s enough though and as he closes the door to his room he realizes that he feels bad because he doesn’t really feel _that bad_. There’s something wrong with him, there must be because Dean’s all fucked up about it, but Sam’s kind of not and that’s weird. At least he thinks so, he thinks that when a guy spends a couple of hours with his tongue in his brother’s mouth that it’s supposed to feel a lot more fucked up to him than it feels right now. Dean’s guilt, his shame, all of that… those things _do_ make Sam feel lower than whale shit. He wants to say he’s sorry even if it was Dean’s idea—he thinks it was anyway, the details are foggy there—so it’ll be okay between them again.

His hangover is a demanding beast though and thinking is only making his head hurt worse, so Sam goes to lie down, hoping to sleep through the worst of it if he can. When he wakes up though, the elephant will still be in the room. He doesn’t know what to do with the damn thing now and he’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to figure it out.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The guilt they both feel hangs in the air of the house like smoke for the better part of a month. It lingers in the long silences between them and the stilted, weird pretend-it’s-normal conversations they try to have. Dean is uncomfortable around Sam and Sam, in turn, picks up on that discomfort and starts feeling uncomfortable himself. He spends a lot of time reading and thinking, mostly about how he can fix this before it goes too far; before there’s too much space between them and too many words left unsaid.

Their guilt and sadness creep into everything they do. It’s in the furtive, shamefully hungry looks they cast at each other when they think the other one isn’t looking. It slips down the halls and paints the air with the sound of their softly shuddering breaths in the night. It’s smeared all over their shaking, sticky hands when those shuddering breaths have slowed to soft pants.

Sam watches Dean, watches the way Dean watches him and asks himself if it’s really so awful. No one’s going to lynch them for it, they’re all dead. It’s just him and Dean and no one ever has to know, that’s his reasoning. They live in a world where there’s not much to live for and even less to look forward to. It begs the question: If they can have this little piece of peace, a taste of what everyone still wants and very few ever get to have, then why not?

The only people who ever have to know are him and Dean; there is no one to judge them but themselves and Sam’s tired of judging himself. Hell, he’s been doing it in a vague way since he was about 14 years old. Maybe that’s why his guilt hasn’t grown on him like a fungus; he’s had more time to adjust and swallow it down like the bitter medicine it is.

It’s after supper one evening and Sam’s watching Dean as he goes to put his plate in the sink. He knows he’ll bolt now and go back to his room where he’s been doing God knows what for the past month now. Sam’s ready for him though and rises in time to catch Dean’s elbow as he goes to walk past him.

“Hey,” Sam says.

Dean’s watching him like a deer caught in headlights, but Sam really looks, he’s trying to find something there that tells him once and for all it’s not just him. He finds it there, a liquid kind of heat underneath Dean’s shame and sadness. It flickers like a candle flame and lights up the green of Dean’s eyes from the inside.

“What is it?” Dean asks. He tugs out of Sam’s grasp, but he stays there, watching Sam for a second then darts his eyes away before flicking them back to look at him.

“I was just wondering,” Sam says and then he stops. He’s not sure how to say this. He rakes his fingers through his long hair and thinks, but he needs to be quick before him or Dean lose their nerve. “Look,” Sam tries again. “I was just wondering if… well. Do you wanna practice kissing again?”

For a second Dean looks like Sam has stabbed him, his face goes white and he twitches away from him another half a step. It makes Sam’s heart drop, maybe he didn’t see it right after all and when Dean shakes his head mutely and walks away, he actually sags. He reaches behind himself and catches his weight on the end of the table.

“Fuck,” Sam snarls under his breath as he hangs his head. He’s only made things worse. He rakes his fingers through his hair again and stands there staring down at the brick floor between his boots.

Then he hears Dean clear his throat. He has come back and Sam’s heart leaps in his chest. Maybe Dean’s come back to punch him in the face, but the fact _he came back_ is a good sign, even if it means he’s about to get hit.

He snaps his head up to look at Dean and watches as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. His face is still too pale and there are streaks of bright red high on his cheeks. He meets Sam’s eyes though and nods once before licking his lips.

“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean says. He nods again and moves closer to Sam. “Yeah,” he says again.

It’s all Sam needs to hear, if he tries to talk now then this window will close and he may never get it open again. He smiles once, a quick thing of real happiness and then shoves away from the table to go to Dean.

When he takes his face in his hands and kisses him again for the first time in weeks, he doesn’t feel ashamed at all. Dean makes a soft sound of shame and want against his mouth before he pushes against Sam and opens his mouth to him. His hands come up to wrap in Sam’s hair and all Sam can think is, _yes_.

This, he thinks as he tilts his head to deepen the kiss, is the way it should be.


	6. Chapter 6

_“The life we lead is sleep; whatever we do, dreams.  
Only death breaks the sleep and wakes us.  
I wish I could’ve woken before this.”_

— Petrarch

The years pass and Sam and Dean melt into each other, becoming something more than what they once were. The line between _brother_ and _significant other_ is so blurred it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. It wasn’t always like that, especially not in the beginning, despite what the kiss in their kitchen meant that afternoon. There are fumbling, nervous touches in the dark where it’s safer, where even they can’t see—and therefore don’t have to acknowledge if they don’t want to—what they’re doing. Those touches grow bolder, more confident as time stretches on by them until they can touch in the harsh light of day where there are no shadows. They can feel and _know_ who it is with their mouth pressed against their skin and not mind it.

The first few months they spend sleeping in separate beds, but after awhile, a few feet is too far away. They’ve grown though, no longer scrawny little boys huddled under the covers because their dreams terrify them and the narrow double beds aren’t roomy enough anymore. They move into John’s old room with a silent agreement between the two of them not to mention it. John’s bed is a king-sized monstrosity and he never slept on more than the edge of the mattress. The boys fall into the center of the bed and Sam slides his hand up Dean’s side. This is _their_ bed now, that’s what it means.

There is a feeling of rebellion shivering along their shoulders and down in the pits of their bellies as their mouths meet. It sits next to an old fear they can’t quite shake off; the fear of John magically coming back and catching them. He’d take the belt to them both for sure if he knew. On some level, what Sam and Dean have become to each other is something he always feared, but would never admit to himself. He saw it though, saw it coming down the road like a slavering beast and tried the best he could to stop it. He’s long dead though and that beast has come knocking, its two backs hunched up and saying, _You can’t outrun the inevitable._

So many firsts they walk through together that they lose count, from the nights spent tentatively touching to the books they’ve found in the gutted remains of towns all over the Midwest. They’ve hidden those same books away and guarded them like mad dogs until they can get home to Blue Shoe and read them. They’ve tasted the fear and trepidation on one another’s skin as they moved past the equator of the belly button to put their mouths on one another.

It’s all there, a culmination of their explorations, in the soft sound of pain Dean makes the first time Sam slowly pushes inside of his body. It’s in the way Dean kisses him even harder to try and muffle that sound and Sam strokes his fingers through the sweaty hair at Dean’s temple. It’s the hoarse cry of pleasure that follows a little while later, the one Sam tears his mouth away from Dean’s to hear; to see the way he shakes and arches beneath him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s a few years later and another experiment, this one gone awry, where afterward Sam says, “Um… Let’s not do that again.”

Dean responds with, “No, never again.”

He wonders about that for a while, wonders what it says about him. He doesn’t want to be the “girl,” but he likes that so much better that he doesn’t want it any other way. He feels a little ashamed because he has nothing to hold it up to, no experiences for comparison or real understanding of what it means.

Sam watches him and turns his head to lazily mouth the curve of his shoulder. “You’re not a chick, dude, calm down.”

“Shut up,” Dean says, but he feels better for it all the same.

Of course he’s not a chick, chicks don’t have dicks, thanks. So what if he likes taking it up the ass? There’s nothing wrong with that. Aside from the fact it’s his brother’s dick up there, but that’s not such a big deal anymore either. It was at first, it was scarily huge and overwhelming. The guilt tasted like moldy pennies on the back of his tongue until his stomach was tied up in knots and he thought he was going to throw up all the time. Sam’s still his brother and he’s more than his brother and that’s okay now. He’d thought himself sick for the want that pulled him to Sam’s hands, Sam’s mouth, Sam’s hair tickling the backs of his knuckles when he ran his fingers through it. Back to _Sam_ he went like a puppet on a string every time he told himself _never again_. It’s made them different, but it’s made them better and they have something more than most people have.

That’s why Dean rolls over on his side to look at Sam and say, “You wanna go again? Ya know, the ah… other way?” He waggles his eyebrows at Sam and Sam laughs. Dean can admit to himself now that he thinks Sam’s dimples are pretty fucking great. 

“Give us a minute here,” Sam says, but he nods, too. “Then sure, yeah.”

“Awesome,” Dean says. Then he yawns. “Or, we can take a nap and then…”

“Or that, yeah,” Sam says. Dean’s yawning is contagious and he does it, too, before rolling over to blink at Dean. “Naps are good.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean mutters, already drifting off.

Sam watches the fluttering of Dean’s gold-tipped lashes as his eyes move beneath their lids until they are still, fanned out beneath his eyes like soft feathers. It takes him by surprise sometimes, sneaking in during quiet moments when he’s idle, that this is theirs and theirs alone. That Dean can love him the way he does may be warped as hell, but it’s still perfect to Sam. He never, ever says that though because Dean would probably kick him for being such a sap. Sam doesn’t even think of himself as a sap, there’s not enough metaphorical goo in him to really go around. In moments like this one, when they’ve passed another milestone and Dean is sleeping with his mouth gently parted, Sam indulges in a second of wonderment for this thing of theirs. Then he snorts softly and closes his eyes, too.

Sam wakes in mid-afternoon with about a hundred things to do before heading out for a burn in a town called Gravesend (it used to be called Kirby). Dean’s a snuggler in his sleep and Sam wakes up sweaty with Dean cooned around him, snoring softly in his ear. He always does, no matter how they fall asleep because Dean inches and rolls his way toward Sam like he’s a big magnet. It’s kind of nice and a lot funny to Sam because Dean would never admit to being a cuddler when he’s awake.

Sam extracts himself from Dean’s grip very carefully, as always wondering how Dean manages to tangle their legs so thoroughly without ever waking either of them up. He goes to take a leak and then goes to the kitchen to stand over the sink and eat a cold biscuit. He gets crumbs all over his chest, but just brushes them off on the floor then sweeps them up when he’s done.

Gravesend is the first burn they’ve had in about eight months, but cleanliness is still important even if the plague has slowed down more these past few years. Now that he’s gotten used to reaping, Sam’s been bored without as much to do the past three or four years. On the other hand, it’s a damned good sign. Bobby keeps telling them that it’s burning out, to just wait, one day it’ll be almost completely gone again. They’re all so used to the plague that it sounds like a nice—a _beautiful_ —dream and not much more. Hope is a four letter word, so none of them allow themselves to go that far, but entertaining fantasies is sometimes harder to avoid.

There is some work still and Sam needs to get Dean up and they both need to pack, get dressed then get going. So, he eats another half a biscuit and goes to do that. Dean’s awake when he walks into the bedroom though, sitting up in bed and drinking water.

“Where’d you go?” he asks.

“To piss and then I got something to eat,” Sam says. “Then I robbed a bank and stole a top hat off an old mannequin.”

“Why?” Dean asks. This is a game they play, something to pass the time and keep them occupied.

“Why not?” Sam asks back. “I wanted to, money’s still nice to have if one day we need it again. And top hats… I like top hats.”

“You’d be seven feet tall with a top hat on,” Dean says. He gestures at Sam and grins. “Besides, naked bank robbing is stupid, dude.”

“Who’s gonna see me?”

“Anyone might and you can’t hide a weapon with no pants on,” Dean says. “Your story is full of holes.”

“Fuck you,” Sam says.

“That was what we agreed on before you went off peeing and robbing banks,” Dean says.

“That sentence is wrong on so many levels, Dean,” Sam says.

Dean grins at him and pats the mattress. “C’mon, Sammy, let’s have sexytimes.”

“Seriously?”

“No, jokingly.”

Sam does laugh and shrugs. “Sure, why not? We gotta get packed up and ready to go when we’re done though.”

“Wow, you sure do know how to sweet talk a guy,” Dean says. He’s still grinning though as he leans back against the headboard. The sunlight has gilded him in soft gold and Sam stares at him until Dean fidgets. “Stop being creepy, man.”

“Sorry,” Sam says as he stretches out on the bed beside Dean to lightly run his fingers down his belly. “Pumpkin pie.”

“The fuck did you just call me?” Dean asks as he grabs Sam’s wandering hand.

“I thought you wanted me to sweet talk you,” Sam says as he gently twists out of Dean’s grasp to stroke his belly again.

“I take it back,” Dean says. “You really suck at it. I kinda want pie now though.”

“Sorry,” Sam says again with a smirk. “Sweetums.”

“Dude, _shut up_ ,” Dean says. He thumps Sam on the back of the head and Sam just presses his face into Dean’s chest and laughs. He hears Dean join him and sighs gently when he combs his fingers through Sam’s hair. “I need to trim this, you’re starting to look like a wild man.”

“Am not,” Sam says. His hair is almost to the middle of his back now. He usually keeps it cut a little shorter than that, but he hasn’t really been paying attention lately.

“Are so, but keep it if you want to,” Dean says. He remembers thinking a long time ago that if Sam wanted to grow his hair down to his knees then he could and he’d leave him alone about it. So, he’ll keep his word to himself and let Sam have long hair if he wants it that way.

“I don ‘t give a shit one way or another,” Sam says.

“Then it’s settled,” Dean says. Sam looks up at him with his eyebrows raised, wanting to ask _what’s_ settled—he didn’t realize it was a debate—but Dean taps him between the eyes. “Now stop talking and fuck me.”

Sam’s not one to argue with a request like that, so he keeps his questions to himself and does as Dean asks.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Gravesend is a small settlement on the outskirts of North Dakota. The plague tripped across the place and decided to stay awhile is how it seems because the population really isn’t big enough for anything else to make sense. Unless it was already there, laying dormant until someone set it loose, but the likelihood of that is incredibly slim. It was probably all thanks to a sick rat wandering through and dropping dead in the wrong place at the wrong (or right, depending on how you look at it) time.

There aren’t as many Reapers these days because there isn’t as much need for them or they’ve died out thanks to their jobs. Jodie got out, Rufus and Ellen died; both of them taken in different places by the Sickos (Dean’s term) that have been cropping up since the day Jo was killed. To Ellen they were always and forever zombies, regardless of the fact they still miraculously had pulses. The job got even more dangerous the day Jo died, they just hadn’t known that yet.

They’ve been to towns where the walking ill are lined up and waiting, drooling, stinking mouths open and ready to take a bite out of them. They’re disturbing, for what they seem capable of doing right down to the fact they seem intent on doing it even when they’re dropping in the streets while trying to come after them. There’s something unbelievably _wrong_ about it and they all know it, but none of them can figure out what the fuck it is. Bobby’s idea that it’s some kind of mutation in the plague itself is the best they have to go on, but even that doesn’t feel completely right. Because of the Sickos, they go in as a solid three-man (and sometimes a few more if the job needs it) team and watch each other’s backs.

Thankfully, there are no Sickos in Gravesend by the time Sam and Dean get there. Everyone in the place is dead save the runner that came looking for them. Bobby pulls in behind them not ten minutes later and looks at the bodies piled in the street and shakes his head.

“They were waitin’ for us, just like in Bear Run,” he says.

“Uh-huh,” Dean says. “They died before they could roll out the welcome wagon though.”

“Goody for us,” Bobby says. He tips his head back to look at the darkening sky and shrugs. “You boys wanna wait ‘til tomorrow to do a sweep to be sure and then get to stacking them in pyres?”

“Yeah, why not?” Sam says, pointing to a rusted tin roof just visible in the distance. “There’s a nice house back there, hardly any weather damage and a gas stove. We checked earlier.”

“Sounds like a plan then,” Bobby says.

He climbs back in his truck to go there and get his gear unpacked for overnight. He glances back at Sam and Dean in time to see Dean touch Sam’s lower back as he goes around to get in the car. He raises his eyebrows beneath the bill of his cap, but doesn’t say anything; he’s been seeing this for years now. They don’t think he’s noticed, but he damned ain’t blind and they’re nowhere as sneaky as they think they are. They’re good though, Bobby will give them that; if it was someone else, someone less observant, then what’s so obvious to him would have slipped right by.

Bobby’s been in their house though, has seen them go to their separate bedrooms only to wake up before they do the next day and find those doors cracked open and the beds still made. He’s been there and seen those same beds with the same creases in the sheets, but has also looked in the open door of John’s old room and seen the mess of covers and laundry in there; laundry that belongs to Sam _and_ Dean. He’s glanced out a window and seen Dean brushing Sam’s hair back from his face with fingers too gentle to be merely brotherly. Bobby has even seen a bite mark in the juncture between Dean’s neck and shoulder and realized Sam’s maybe a little kinky and that’s just goddamned disturbing.

For a long time it put him off. He didn’t care about the boys any less, but what they were doing sat blunt and heavy as a brick in his belly all the same. Brothers aren’t supposed to be that damned close, but these two are and it’s taken him years to come to accept it and keep his trap shut. He’d tried talking to them about it in a roundabout way, bringing up things like Alexander and Hephaestion and their tutor’s emphasis on _platonic_ friendship. Sam got it, he’s pretty sure, but Dean only wanted to know why he was rattling on about two dead gay guys.

What Bobby does know for sure is that he didn’t see either of them for about six months after that. He can take a hint and being part of their lives is more important to him than what they do with each other behind closed doors. It’s still weird—they’re _related_ , for God’s sake—but he deals with it because he loves them. The way he sees it is that when all’s said and done, if they make each other happy, give each other something no one else can, then that’s what matters. Besides, it ain’t like they’re gonna have one-eyed, six-legged mutant babies together.

So when he gets up the next morning and finds them wrapped around each other in the master bedroom of the house they’re squatting in, he just closes the door quiet as he can and goes on about his business. He does need to say something to them about maybe making sure the damn latches catch when they pull a door shut, but he doesn’t know how to do that without laying it all out there. Maybe he ought to leave that alone, too. Hell, why not? He’s kept his yap shut about all the rest, after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Gravesend is a quick and simple job and they’re done before sundown of the next day. They tell Bobby bye and make plans to come by his place for dinner in a couple of weeks then they leave. On their way back to Blue Shoe, Dean turns to look at Sam and says, “I think Bobby knows.”

“I think Bobby’s known for a long time,” Sam says after a minute to think about whether he should tell Dean or not.

“What? How?” Dean asks.

“How do you think?” Sam asks.

“I thought it was because the door came open last night,” Dean says. “I heard the latch catch this morning and figured he pulled it shut.”

“Shit,” Sam says. “But no, that’s not it, I don’t think. I don’t know _when_ he figured it out, but I think it was around the time he tried to give us that talk about Alexander the Great.”

“What’s that guy got to do with anything?” Dean asks.

Sam sighs. “You have a memory like a sieve, man.”

“I have a memory like a steel trap,” Dean says. “I just don’t… happen… to remember… _that_.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam says. He takes a turn and then shakes his head. “Alexander and Hephaestion, Dean. The… What did you call them? Right. The “two dead gay guys”.”

“Who?” Dean says and then, “Ohhh. _Oh_. So, he was like, trying to give us a lesson?”

“Pretty much,” Sam says. “More like trying to gently dissuade us from, well, you know.”

“Having sex with each other,” Dean says with a nod.

“Yeah, that,” Sam says.

Dean doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and then he laughs.

“What?” Sam asks.

“Bobby’s little talk went really badly,” Dean says around another snort of laughter.

“He was trying to be subtle, I guess,” Sam says with a grin.

“That was too damned subtle,” Dean says.

“I got it,” Sam says.

Dean irritably flaps a hand at the windshield. “Be quiet and drive.”

Sam laughs and does just that, but he’s thinking, too. About twenty miles later, he asks, “If you had gotten what Bobby was saying… Would you’ve stopped then? I mean, we’d been messing around for like two years by then, but would you have?”

Dean shakes his head almost immediately. “Nah,” he says. “Done’s done and by then, dude, it was _done_.”

Sam grins and says, “Yeah, it kinda was, wasn’t it?”

“Yep,” Dean says. He picks at a loose thread on his coat sleeve and then says, “Sam, do you ever still think that what we’re doing is… ya know… Sick? Wrong? Fucked up?”

“No,” Sam says. He hesitates for another minute, but they’ve been doing this for damn near ten years now, the time for secrets is pretty much over, he thinks. “I never thought about it that much to begin with, not like you.”

“You can’t be that morally impaired,” Dean says. Sam glances at him and raises an eyebrow. Dean only shrugs. “It fucked with me for a long time.” He shuts up and makes a disgruntled sound. “I don’t want to have this conversation, it’s got ‘sharing of feelings’ written all over it.”

“You started it,” Sam says.

“And I really regret that now,” Dean says.

“Dick,” Sam says. He taps his fingers on the wheel and figures if Dean doesn’t want to talk then he can at least listen. He’s made up his mind now and sees no point in _not_ saying anything anymore. “I had a thing for you when I was fourteen, maybe thirteen… by the time I was twenty one, man… most of the guilt was _over_ for me. It’s not a lack of morals, it’s just a longer adjustment period.”

Dean is dead silent until they’re back at home and getting ready for bed after a quick supper and wash up. “Fourteen, really?”

“Or thirteen,” Sam says. It’s not a hard topic to lose track of, so he doesn’t miss a beat even if it has been hours.

“Really?” Dean asks again. He looks like he’s having a hard time processing that. “There was once, when you rubbed me down with that wintergreen stuff, after you’d been sick and all. I didn’t really ever _think_ about it though.”

“I didn’t walk around pining away after you, that would’ve been stupid. Not to mention fucking _pathetic_ ,” Sam says. “But yeah and I mean, I didn’t plan on it or anything, it just happened.”

“Because I’m hot,” Dean says as he lays down in bed and grins up at Sam.

Sam throws his shirt over Dean’s grinning face and sits on the side of the bed next to him. Dean grumbles and tosses the shirt away then runs his palm up the line of Sam’s spine. “I had a thing for you because… because… you’re _you_ ,” Sam says, half spluttering it because he has no clue how to articulate what he means.

“Aww, that’s so sweet of you, Sammy,” Dean says. He gooses Sam lightly high up on his ribs, making him twitch and twist to get away from him.

“God, _dick_ ,” Sam says and gets up to climb in bed on his side.

He’s laying down and the candles are blown out by the time Dean says, “Hey, no, look… It’s… thanks. Not many people would really like _me_ , I don’t think.”

“I do,” Sam says simply. 

“I really hope so, I’d hate to know I was putting out for some dude that couldn’t fucking stand me,” Dean says.

Sam laughs and elbows him. “You’re not,” he says.

“Okay then,” Dean says. “Now can we please stop talking about this shit?”

“We can if you stop bringing it up,” Sam offers.

“Deal,” Dean says.

“You sure? ‘Cause I can do this shit all night,” Sam says.

“That’s because you have a magical, hidden mangina,” Dean says. “Maybe you can knit me some socks later, too, if you have time.”

Sam elbows him again even harder and Dean grunts. “You’re the doofy motherfucker that _bakes cakes_ ,” Sam says.

“I bake awesome cakes,” Dean agrees. He sounds very smug about it.

“Go to sleep, Dean,” Sam says. “You make me tired.”

“Then _you_ go to sleep,” Dean says.

Sam elbows him again and that time, Dean rolls over on top of him and kisses him hard. “Your violence turns me on, Sammy.”

“I think you have a sex addiction problem,” Sam says as he flips them over again so that Dean’s lying under him. He drops his head to nip his bottom lip, liking the sharp little shivery hiss of breath Dean gives when he does.

“Nope,” Dean says. He could say more, but he won’t. Unlike Sam he doesn’t have a magical, hidden mangina. He laughs into Sam’s mouth as he lifts his head to deepen the kiss.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They head out to Bobby’s a week later than they originally intended to, but it’s easy to lose track of time when they don’t own a clock or a calendar. They’re pushing their luck to even know what day of the week it is and as time’s gone on, even that’s getting harder to do. They have of course missed Leap Years and so, chances are good their dates are always a day or two off anyway. Either way, Sam and Dean figure Bobby won’t mind that they’re a week late and they head out intending to spend a couple of days with him. Winter’s coming on fast, autumn dying out to make way for it, and they always head up to help Bobby can vegetables for the winter and get his woodpile moved and stacked higher.

They always return to Blue Shoe with a good many canned vegetables of their own, thankful for Bobby’s generosity. He’s proven to be a master gardener, which surprised everyone including Bobby himself. The man always ends up growing more than he alone can eat, so he shares with the Winchesters and Jodie if she stops by. 

Jodie has moved on to what’s left of Nebraska though, living in the old burned-out remains of the town her mother lived in as a girl, so she doesn’t make it out as often as she used to. They all miss her, but that’s how things go these days, people spreading out further and further apart and old friendships getting caught in the upheaval. Reapers tend to be a close bunch, but Jodie’s out of that game now, too and the distance between them all is even wider. Dean had the tiniest kernel of a crush on her back when he was about twelve or so and the former Deputy Mills was the star of his first ever spank fantasy. 

He tells Sam that story on their way to Bobby’s just to watch him choke on his water.

Dean’s laughing and slapping Sam on the back while Sam tries to punch him when they start down Bobby’s driveway. “Asshole, you do that on purpose,” Sam says. He stops trying to hit him to wipe at his streaming eyes and mop the water off his face.

“Heh, yeah,” Dean says. “Good old Jodie Mills, she was a looker.”

“She’s pretty, yeah, but I don’t need to know about you beating off to fantasies of her when you were twelve, dude,” Sam says. “What did you do, fantasize about her tucking you in?”

“Uh-huh,” Dean says. “Except she was naked.”

He’s lying through his teeth. The fantasy hadn’t been much more than Jodie smiling and telling him how handsome he was. It hadn’t gotten a chance to progress much further before he’d blown his load, much to his embarrassment—and delight because damn, orgasms were _awesome_. 

“And you say _I_ over-share,” Sam says.

He’s biting back a grin though. He actually doesn’t mind Dean’s little stories aside from the fact they’re random as hell, but timed perfectly by Dean to make Sam choke, splutter or otherwise make a mess of one sort or another. He thinks that’s pretty much what big brothers are supposed to do and it’s his job as the little brother to play along and pretend shock and outrage well after the moment has passed. Dean enjoys thinking he’s gotten a rise out of him and Sam enjoys letting him think so. This dance is an old, old dance between siblings anywhere, anytime.

“You totally over-share,” Dean says. “All the time, too.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam says as they finally reach Bobby’s.

His driveway is a five mile long rutted dirt track, so they move about ten or twenty miles an hour just to keep from throwing out the front end alignment on the Impala. Bobby needs to do something about his fucking driveway. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

They park beside Bobby’s newest truck—why he changes vehicles so often has forever been a mystery to them—and get out. Bobby’s house is a two-storey monstrosity that probably belonged to some rich cattle rancher at one time. Maybe they used it as a vacation home or a party villa or maybe a place to hook up with their secret lover. Either way, it makes Sam and Dean’s house look tiny and poor, even though it’s not.

Singer Manor, as Bobby calls it, is a chateau-style behemoth of stone and cedar stuck off in the middle of Ass-End Nowhere, Montana (which was most of the state even before the plague) and he loves rattling around in it. Sam and Dean like it, too. It makes them feel wonderfully haughty, even in their patched black clothes and dusty boots. The place in Blue Shoe is still home to them though and they’re always glad to go back to it when their visits are over. They don’t have to sneak and hide there, pretending to be something less than what they are for the benefit of someone else.

“Bobby, we’re here!” Dean calls when they walk through the front door. He’s frowning. Usually Bobby comes out to meet them, shotgun in hand if it’s too dark to see outside when they arrive. Today there is no Bobby to greet them and it makes his skin prickle as they move further into the house. He looks over at Sam with an eyebrow raised. “You don’t think he’s playing hide-and-seek do you?”

“Since when would Bobby _ever_ do something like that?” Sam asks, mirroring Dean and raising an eyebrow.

“I dunno,” Dean says with a shrug. “Maybe he finally lost the rest of his marbles and decided it was play time.”

“No,” Sam says. His skin is prickling, too, because they know what tends to happen when people don’t come to the door; the reason for it. It makes his gut clench the second he thinks it and it doesn’t let up once the thought has settled in. “I’m gonna check upstairs, you go out back and see if he’s there.”

“Okay,” Dean says. Sam doesn’t say anything when he draws the gun tucked in his belt and moves off for the back of the house. Sam does the same thing as he starts upstairs, moving lightly on the old risers, trying to remember each and every one that creaks.

He’s made the second floor landing when he hears Dean shouting for him from downstairs. Sam thunders down the stairs, following the sound of, “Sam! Back here, help me!”

Sam barrels through the kitchen and skids to a stop on the limestone tiles to keep from slamming into Dean who’s crouching in the open backdoor. “What is it?”

“Man, it’s not good,” Dean says. He shuffles aside so Sam can see and what he sees is Bobby laying just on the other side of the door with a bushel of late autumn vegetables spilled all around him. His cheek is pillowed by a shriveled looking yam and there’s blood on the corner of his mouth. It’s not enough blood to be plague though. He must have busted his lip when he fell.

“Bobby?” Sam says even as Dean takes one of his shoulders and gives it a shake.

Bobby makes a low, slurred sounding moan and they share a worried look before Dean takes a deep breath and rolls him over. “Oh, no,” Sam says. The knot of worry about the plague disappears as his stomach drops to somewhere around his ankles.

“What the hell?” Dean asks. He touches Bobby again and then looks at Sam who’s taken a step back in shock. “What’s wrong with his face?”

“You remember that medical book I got a while back?” Sam asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says.

Sam gestures at Bobby again, more specifically at the left side of his face that looks as though it has been yanked violently down by some invisible hand. “Stroke,” he says. “That’s one of the signs of stroke.”

“Shit!” Dean curses and then says, “No, no, c’mon, Bobby, get up. Sam, _help me_!”

“I’m coming,” Sam says.

He didn’t mean to stand there and stare, he was in shock was all. It’s alarmingly easy to forget that there are other ways to die besides the plague these days. To see it is like being slapped in the face brutally hard. It’s even worse when that proof is someone like Bobby, someone they rely on and think of as family, someone who means the whole world to them. Someone who is pretty much all they have left.

They get Bobby up and carefully take him upstairs to his room—his ‘master suite,‘ he always calls it with a faint little smile. Bobby never thought he’d get the chance to live in a rich man’s house and he enjoys it. There they strip him down with faint feelings of embarrassment, both secondhand and firsthand, and fight the urge to apologize to Bobby as they dress him in his pajamas.

“What’re we supposed to do?” Dean asks Sam at the same time Sam asks him, “Now what?”

They only stare at each other, both of them with their hearts heavy and bellies twisted up into knots again now that they’ve crawled out of their feet. The silence stretches on until Sam says, “I’ll go get some water, see if we can get any in him. Ah… You go check on the chickens, maybe?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says. “I’ll get some eggs. Maybe he’ll feel like eating later. I mean… You don’t think he’s in a coma do you?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says.

He looks at Bobby again and fights the urge to put his cap back on his head. He looks strange and un-Bobby-like without it. To keep from doing it, he just walks out of the room.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby doesn’t wake up at all that first day, he barely even stirs, and on the second day, while he stirs, he still doesn’t open his eyes. Sam and Dean sleep in chairs beside his bed, one on either side, flanking him so one or the other of them will be the first thing he sees should he wake up. They’re out cold the fifth night, the night Bobby finally wakes up with a wordless bleating sound like an angry goat.

Sam and Dean startle awake and fumble for the kerosene lamps on the nightstands. They get them lit and find Bobby staring back at them, a little wild-eyed, but alert. He’s moving his mouth and flapping his right hand up and down like a broken wing as he makes more of those strangely slurred, almost animal-like sounds. They’re _trying_ to be words, but it’s just not happening and they can see Bobby’s frustration and fear growing each time he tries anew.

“Bobby, calm down,” Sam says. He sits on the side of the bed and takes Bobby’s useless left arm in his hand while Dean does the same on his right to try and calm that dying bird flail of his hand.

“Unh! Unh!” Bobby says back. “Mrrrrn!”

They look at each other across his body and then look at him. “We think you had a stroke,” Dean says.

Bobby is silent for a long while, eyes walling in his head, jaw muscles twitching in agitation. Finally, he slaps his right hand on the mattress and garbles out, “Lalsb! Lalsb!”

“Balls?” Sam hazards.

“Unf!” Bobby says as he goes limp with a heavy sigh.

“It’ll be okay, Bobby, don’t you worry,” Dean says. “Me and Sam… we’ll take care of you.”

Bobby cuts his eyes to the side to give him a look that clearly says, _Doubtful._

“No, come on, it’ll be fine,” Dean says.

He can hear the frantic little note in his voice, the panic wanting to creep in because he doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of a stroke victim. He wants to do this though and he knows Sam does, too. Bobby’s all they’ve got aside from each other and without him… He doesn’t want to think about it.

Dean doesn’t want him and Sam to be _orphans_. Sure, fine, they’re too old to technically be orphans any-damned-way, but just the same. They’ve lost everyone else they cared about and now Bobby, the one they care about the most… He doesn’t know what to do other than soldier on and _try_ to make it better.

Sam doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are big and round, his face pale in the orange glow of the lamps. He’s upset, too, because this hurts and Dean knows it. Bobby is quiet, having forgone trying to speak when it’s pointless. His left side is numb and his tongue feels like a rubber coated brick in his mouth, something dead and sticky lying there useless.

“I’ll go get some water and some broth,” Sam finally offers. “You’re bound to be starving.”

He gets up and leaves Dean sitting with Bobby. When he’s gone, Dean tries on an encouraging smile despite the feeling of those all-too familiar claws from the panic-kitten digging into his heart. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says again, trying with all his might to sound reassuring. “It is.”

Bobby sighs again and then closes his eyes to shut out the sight of Dean’s big, glassy looking eyes. He doesn’t want to see the worry and fear dancing around in them naked as a jaybird because this is his fault, his and his traitorous goddamned body’s.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby’s not the best patient in the world, but he tries for the boys because _they_ are trying so damned hard to look after him. But having them wash him and feed him and—God help him—change his soiled clothes, is taking its toll on him. Not only is he angry about this, about having his mind be fine and yet, still being a prisoner in his own body, he’s also ashamed. He has to be treated like a child by these two _boys_ —they will forever be boys to Bobby Singer, too, knobby-kneed, grubby-faced kids that he loves dearly—and he hates it.

Hell, he can’t even eat right anymore. Not only do Sam and Dean have to feed him now, one has to stand by to slap him on the back or tip his head just so if his food goes down wrong. He chokes on half of what he tries to swallow because his throat muscles no longer work as they should.

After he found them alive, Bobby swore to himself that he would always take care of the Winchester boys or die trying. Instead, here they are taking care of _him_ and it weighs on his mind, clogging up most of his other thoughts. He has become the one thing he never wanted to be; he has become a _burden_.

That feeling chokes him more than any food can, but he tries to hide it from them. When they’re off doing chores, Bobby can’t always stop the silent, frustrated tears that leak down his face though. He wants to tell them, _I’m sorry_ , but he can’t even get his mouth to make those two simple words. So, during the hours while the boys are out tending to his place for him, Bobby starts thinking and thinking hard.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam and Dean are out stacking up firewood next to the backdoor when the first snow of the season begins to fall. They’ve been at Bobby’s going on two weeks now and know that soon one of them will need to head back to their place to look in on Bessie II and the chickens.

They’re putting it off, but they won’t be able to do that for much longer because once the winter sets in, they’re going to be stuck here until spring. They have chains for the Impala’s tires, but the driveway—hell, the whole place—is going to end up buried in snow since they have no plows anymore to clear it. Winter these days is about hunkering down and battening the hatches until the thaw comes. Then that’s all about frozen mud-slush and the first struggling shoots of green breaking through the dirty crust.

They’re standing in the back beside the woodpile, looking up at the iron-grey belly of the low-hanging sky when they hear a shot from inside the house. They jump and slip a little in the light crust of fine snow gathered on the ground already as they turn to run inside.

They make a beeline up to Bobby’s room and when they shove the door open, all they see is the empty bed until Sam turns his head to the right a little. “Oh, God, no,” he says. His voice sounds faint and hoarse.

Dean turns his head to look and makes a low, moaning sound of pain. Bobby’s stocking feet are all that’s visible from behind the door of his big walk-in closet. They’re still twitching a little.

“Bobby, _no_ ,” he croaks out and goes with Sam on numb feeling legs to see what’s inside the closet.

They both retch and turn away from the sight of Bobby’s body. He’s laying face down with a puddle of blood spreading out around his head like a wet halo. He shot himself with a .22, the low velocity of the round pinging around in his head, burrowing little ant farm tunnels through his brain tissue. They don’t need to be told to know he did it to try and save them a big mess to clean up. A .22 is quite effective as a means of suicide, all the work and none of the fuss of having to mop brain off the walls as a rule.

“Why?” Dean asks as they stumble away from the closet to sit on the bed, facing the other wall. “ _Why?_ We had this, he was getting better.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Sam says. He lowers his head and clasps his hands loosely between his knees. “I think he did it because… because he thought he was being a pain in the ass.”

If Bobby had been able to get physical therapy and proper medical care then Bobby probably would’ve made more of a recovery, but the way he was… Sam knows as well as Dean does that what they had was about as good as it was ever going to get. It hurts like hell though because they would have taken care of Bobby for as long as it took, until the day he died, and it didn’t matter to them at all. 

Sam tries to swallow down the salty wad of tears crawling up in his throat.

For Bobby to have dragged himself all the way from the bed to his closet where he kept most of his guns means he was pretty fucking determined to do this. If they had caught him today then there would have been tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. Eventually Bobby would have pulled that goddamned trigger.

“Well, he wasn’t,” Dean snarls. He drops his head and puts his face in his hands and tries to choke back his own tears. He’s heartbroken, but so very angry, too, that he drops his hands and turns to glare at the closet. “You hear me, you stubborn old sonofabitch? You weren’t being a pain in the ass! Not to me, not to Sam, but you just had to go and do something _stupid_ didn’t you? _Didn’t you?!_ ”

“Dean, stop it,” Sam says. He reaches and grabs Dean before he can get off the bed to go scream at Bobby’s corpse up close. He feels the way Dean’s shaking and knows he’s shaking, too, but he only pulls Dean back down on the bed. “Stop it,” he says again as he wraps his arms around him.

Dean fights against him for a moment, but then he sags against Sam and presses his face into the side of his neck. Sam ducks his head down to rest his cheek against the back of Dean’s head and while they don’t cry, they hold onto each other until most of the shaking has stopped.

When Dean lifts his head again, he looks at Sam once then stands up. He stares down at his hands before he straightens his back and squares his shoulders. “Come on, Sam, we’ve got a hole to dig,” he says.

Sam nods and follows Dean out of the room to help him dig Bobby’s grave.

The ground is cold and hard even this early in to winter, but autumn itself was a bitch this year. It takes them hours working together and taking turns while the other one rests to dig Bobby’s grave. The snow stopped sometime while they were inside with Bobby, but it’s started up again by the time they bring him out and there’s a fine sifting of white along the edges of the grave.

They lower their friend and father figure down into the cold mouth they’ve cut into the earth and then quietly shovel the dirt back over him. It’s only when they’re done that tears finally slip down their cheeks quick as liquid glass. The howling wind freezes them there as they hammer the cross they made when they finished the grave into the hard ground. Tomorrow they will pile rocks atop Bobby’s final resting place and after that, they have no idea what to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It takes them another week to go through all of Bobby’s things, sorting through them and leaving behind what they can’t use or don’t want. At first they feel like thieves, although they have taken from other places countless times, but in the end they push that feeling aside. They know Bobby would have wanted them to have his things, he’d said as much once or twice anyway, _When I die, I want you boys to loot the hell out of my place,_ was how he had put it.

Most of his clothes won’t fit them, but they take food, weapons, books and moonshine, seeds and plants. They also take a couple of his old trucker caps, the ones he wore the most, just to have something to remember him by. Dean takes his old Zippo and a nice silver flask he had before they ever left Sioux Falls. Sam finds a fine old pocket watch, the kind that needs winding instead of running on a battery and winds it using the grandfather clock in the hall to set it by. At least now he’ll know what time it is. By the time they’re done, they’ve got the Impala loaded down and Bobby’s truck as well, the bed of which is mostly full of firewood.

They make one last walk up the hill they buried Bobby on and take turns telling their old friend goodbye once and for all. Then they drive away, Dean in the Impala and Sam following behind him in the truck. It’s snowing again, winter howling down from the mountains and sinking its claws into the north deep as it can get them already. Their sadness over Bobby’s death is fresh in them as an open wound, something gaping and sore. They have all winter long to rattle around inside the blue granite house with their grief.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Spring comes slow that year, sneaking in instead of roaring down on warm air currents. Late season frosts kill back most of the vegetation that’s started to bloom while Sam and Dean look out their windows at the desolate landscape around them. It’s times like this that they’re both glad to be living in a mostly evergreen forest. Winter has been long and hard, they’re going stir-crazy and getting twitchy the longer it drags out.

It got so bad back around January that they went outside anyway and made snowmen then chased each other through the silent, white woods like they were kids again; kids gone mad with boredom. They made a fire pit in the backyard that night and ate there, drinking moonshine and sitting wrapped up in blankets. It was Sam’s idea that they get naked to keep warm and Dean, well, he liked that idea just fine. They spent the next week huddled in bed with nasty colds, but they still think it was worth it.

When green comes out at long last and looks to stay, they head out hunting as soon as they can. They mean to make at least a two day trip out of it. Sam thinks they can follow the creek along and maybe he’ll catch some early trout because he still loves to fish. Dean’s hoping for a moose and only scoffs when Sam asks him what the hell he thinks they’re going to do with a _moose_.

“Eat it, dumbass,” Dean says.

“Moose are huge, they make deer look tiny,” Sam says. “If you nail one twenty miles or more out, how the hell are we supposed to bring it back? We’re not equipped for that.”

“We’ll work something out,” Dean tells him as he ducks off into the forest ahead of him.

“Yeah, like maybe you not shooting one,” Sam says. They take elk sometimes and even then they’re pushing their luck. If they take a bull moose down then they can stand around and go, _Hey, look at what we shot!_ and that’s about it.

“Pfft,” Dean says. “I want to shoot a moose, I’ve never done that before.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Sam says.

Dean stops in the trail in front of him and turns to point a finger in his face. “Don’t make me pull this hunting trip over, Sam. I will do it.”

Sam slaps his hand out of his face and walks around him. “Whatever, Dean.”

Dean follows along behind him and laughs a bit. “C’mon, man, that was a good one.”

“It was okay,” Sam allows.

“You think you can do any better?” Dean asks.

“No, but I’m not cheesy,” Sam says.

“I am not cheesy, you take that back,” Dean says.

“And if I don’t, what’re you gonna do?” Sam asks.

“I won’t have sex with you anymore,” Dean says.

“Okay,” Sam says.

“Huh?” Dean says. He’s puzzled by that, that Sam would give up having sex with him. Then he thinks on it a minute and nods. “Ah-ha, you think I won’t do it, right?”

“Pretty much,” Sam says.

“Wait and see,” Dean says.

“Will do,” Sam says. He’s biting his bottom lip against a smile as they traipse further into the forest. He glances over his shoulder at Dean and finds him scowling at his back, shafts of sunlight cutting through the canopy above them, turning his eyes translucent green-gold.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” Dean asks him. He’s still pouting.

Sam shrugs and turns around. “I was just thinking that your eyes look really pretty in this light.”

“You are such a fucking _girl_ ,” Dean snaps even as he feels heat rushing up his neck and over his cheeks.

Sam just throws his head back and laughs.

That evening, Dean breaks his word and has sex with Sam again. Sam, being wise, doesn’t point out that he’s terrible at keeping his threats and promises. Thankfully (though to Dean’s disappointment) they don’t bag a moose the entire trip, but they get two mule deer and a nice string of trout to smoke later. They also run into a bear and have to abandon their first deer in order to better run for their lives.

They’re both pretty pissed about that and in typical frontier fashion, Dean vows to take revenge on the grizzly. Sam tells him he is not John Wayne and to stop it. They’re still arguing about why (and why not) Dean would’ve made a better cowboy than Wayne ever did had he been in movies when they spot their second deer. All in all, their spring hunting trip is an adventure _and_ a success and they make it home tired, but in high spirits.

Three days later a runner shows up at their door and tells them about a place in Idaho that’s come down sick with the plague. The girl can’t be much older than 15 and she’s too thin for her age, but she’s ballsy. They offer to give her a ride back and she turns them down flat, says she’s going to keep heading north. Out of kindness, they tell her about Bobby’s old place, but warn her not to mess with the grave or they’ll come looking for her. She thanks them and goes on her way.

“She said there was only fifty or so people there,” Dean says as they’re packing up. “Why the hell did the plague hit them so hard?”

“Maybe it’s getting desperate,” Sam says.

“You talk about that shit like it _thinks_ , Sam and that’s pretty creepy,” Dean says.

“I don’t mean to, it just happens sometimes is all,” Sam says.

Truth is, he remembers when he was sick, some of it anyway. It’s come back to him over time, some of it surfacing in dreams where the information can’t be trusted, but feels real all the same. At first all he could remember was fear when he could think at all, but now he remembers something like a voice speaking without words, whispering to him and showing him things. Sam thinks he may have been a lawyer if the plague hadn’t happened. He would have married a girl with blond hair and brown eyes, but she would have died. His life would have been triumphs overshadowed by sorrow forevermore.

Dean would have always been there though. One night in some seedy motel room they would have kissed and this, what they have, would have come to pass anyway. Every road would have led to a dead end or a cliff that they either chose to jump off of or were pushed from, but they would have gone together. Mostly, Sam thinks it was all fever dreams, but there’s a very tiny part of him that can’t help but wonder if he was allowed a glimpse of the future that would have come to pass.

“Sam? Helloooo, Sammy?” Dean says. He snaps his fingers in front of his face. “What the fuck are you doing and where the hell did you go on me?”

“What?” Sam asks. He blinks his eyes back into focus and sees Dean frowning at him with a t-shirt in his hand.

“Dude,” Dean says. “You are a space cadet sometimes.”

“Sorry,” Sam says. He gives his head a quick shake and hefts his duffel over his shoulder. “You ready?”

“Ready as I ever am,” Dean says.

Neither of them discuss how strange, how _wrong_ , it feels to be going on a burn without Bobby there to back them up. His absence is a heavy presence between them all the way to Idaho.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They’re almost where they need to be—a little settlement called Homestead—when they come upon a woman and little boy walking down the road toward them. She sees their black car and starts waving her arms in the air. People know Reapers when they see them before they ever lay eyes on their black clothes because they’re some of the only people who still drive. They exchange a look and then Dean shrugs, pulls to the side and cracks his window.

“Help us,” the woman says. Her eyes are crystal blue and her face is filthy with road dust and the muddy tracks her tears have cut through it.

“We’re on our way to Homestead now,” Dean tells her.

She shakes her head and points out across an overgrown field. “My boyfriend,” she says. “He’s back at the house. He got sick, too, died this morning and I can’t… he’s too heavy for me to bring him out. Can you…” She trails off with a soft sob as the little boy looks up at her with eyes the color of dark coffee.

“Mama, please stop crying,” he says. His bottom lip quivers as he tugs at her hand.

“It’s okay, baby. I’ll be okay,” she says. She cuts her streaming eyes back to look at Sam and Dean. “These men are going to help us.”

“Ah… Yeah,” Dean says. “Just tell us where to go.”

“The driveway’s about half a mile up from here,” she says. “Follow us.”

“Okay,” Dean says.

The woman turns around to go back the way she came and stops at the end of the driveway and points. “He’s in the cellar,” she says.

Dean nods to her and goes down the rutted drive—it’s really more of a wide path by now—and heads on to the neat little farmhouse sitting there. It could stand a coat or two of paint, most things could these days, but it’s obvious these people have put a lot of work into it. It’s a crying damned shame they had to go and lose it all. People still stay away from each other mostly, but Bobby wasn’t the only one clued in to the fact the plague seems to be burning out. Because of that, some people are settling in groups again, although they do way better at keeping their populations small. A lot of the time it doesn’t seem to matter and the plague comes anyway.

As he puts the car in park, Dean does wonder for a moment if maybe Sam wasn’t on to something when he said it was getting desperate. Then he says, “Nah,” under his breath and gets out with Sam to go dispose of the woman’s dead boyfriend.

They find the man right where the woman said he’d be and wrinkle their noses at the stench of septicemia that wafts up from the body. “Alright,” Sam says as he pulls the blankets up over the man’s dark, mottled face. He looks at Dean and asks, “On three?” as he takes the blankets at the foot of the bed in hand.

“Yep,” Dean says.

“One,” Sam says.

“Two,” Dean says.

“Three,” they say in unison and then they lift.

The body is cold even through the covers they have him wrapped in. They can smell the rot and feel the sick slide of tissue pulling away from his extremities. They’re professionals though, so they suck it up and haul the body out to the backyard where they clear a patch of weeds away before dousing the body with lighter fluid.

As they toss their matches on the body and the fire jumps to its dragon-dancing life, they hear the woman’s voice carrying to them from across the flat field. She’s singing “Amazing Grace” and she has a lovely, throaty kind of voice; a voice suited to a blues singer. Sam and Dean listen to her going through one hymn after another while they watch her boyfriend’s remains turn to ash.

After they’re done, they douse the few remaining embers and watch the wind pick up the greasy dust and send it flying into the bright afternoon sky. It’s a beautiful day and perfect for a burn; dry and windy. They leave and let the woman know it’s done and she thanks them with more tears slipping down her face.

“Come on, Jason, let’s go have some lunch,” she tells her son.

“Is Travis gone, Mama?” he asks her as she leads him away by the hand.

“Yes, baby, he is,” she says.

“I’m sad,” Jason says.

“So am I, sweetie,” is the last Sam and Dean hear her say before they motor on toward Homestead. A town with a small population like that is only a few hours work most likely and they can be done and gone by dark if they’re lucky.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Because they’re Winchesters, luck doesn’t smile on them often or for long. They make it to Homestead and find that the population is a bit higher than fifty or so. It’s more like eighty or ninety. A good many of them are up and walking around and not because they’re the picture of health. 

“Goddamnit!” Dean says after he blows a hole in the gut of a ten year old girl with a hatchet in her hand. “I fucking hate Sickos.”

“Me, too,” Sam says. He shoves Dean out of the way to shoot the man that was creeping up on them. He has blood running out of his mouth and the whites of his eyes are so red the irises looked like they’re swimming in blood.

“Did we bring enough ammo?” Dean asks him.

“We brought all we have left,” Sam says. Before the runner showed up they had been making plans to head out on a scavenging expedition for more bullets or at least the stuff to make more ammunition with.

“I say we firebomb these motherfuckers,” Dean says as they haul ass back through town. He pauses long enough to blow some old woman’s shit away. “Gotcha, bitch,” he says with a fierce grin.

“Agreed,” Sam says. He’s not real big on firebombing, but desperate times call for desperate measures. They’re up against a population where about half of them are Sickos and they’re running low on ammo. Even as he thinks it, Dean tries to shoot a man lurching toward them and his gun makes a dry click.

“Shit!” he barks.

Sam takes the shot himself even though the man has already fallen. He doesn’t care, he’s pissed now. He’s got to be running low himself though and they need to do something quick.

“We need to get them to chase us,” Sam says.

“What? I don’t think that’s a problem, Sam,” he says.

“No, I mean… We need to trap them somewhere and then light it up,” Sam says.

“Ah. Good plan,” Dean says.

“Thanks,” Sam says as they reach the Impala and wrench the passenger door open. They pile in practically on top of each other and just get the door closed. 

Dean slides behind the wheel, cranks the car then throws it in reverse to back away from the coming onslaught. He looks at the sick people lurching after them and says, “Ellen was right, they really are like zombies.”

“They’re something, that’s for damned sure,” Sam says. He doesn’t think they’re like zombies though. They’re more like automatons to him; their limbs moving like someone’s pulling a bunch of invisible strings. It’s a mutation, just like Bobby said, but it’s something else, too. Something like a voice speaking without any words. It makes his skin crawl at what that idea suggests to him and he shoves it away, refusing to acknowledge it.

They make it out of Homestead and sit on the outskirts of town plotting and planning all through the night. They finally settle on an old grain warehouse near the center of town for the place to trap their pursuers. 

“Then we roast their asses,” Dean says.

“Yep,” Sam says.

The next morning, they go back into town and drive around the warehouse, keeping a wary eye out for any Sickos that may come after them. There are a couple, but even after one night the population has dropped by roughly half. Still, there are too many of them and too few of Sam and Dean to take a chance on using up what little ammo they have left in the car.

They make sitting ducks out of themselves after rigging the warehouse to burn. Soon enough, the Sickos come and they walk at a brisk pace ahead of them—running is a waste of energy since most of these people are about done for anyway. They go through one side of the warehouse and only then do they run to make it out the other side. There they force the rusted old door shut and slip around to the front to wait for the last of them to stumble on inside. They shove those doors closed as well and listen to the eerie sound of dying feet scuffing across gritty concrete. Someone inside coughs and another moans and Sam shakes his head as he picks up his piece of fuse.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Fuck, yes,” Dean says. Then he flicks his lighter and touches the flame to the end of the fuse. They’re doing this one old school, he thinks, and for a moment he pretends that John’s still alive because his old man haunts him sometimes.

The fire catches and they stand back to watch the warehouse and its crazed inhabitants go up in a hail of smoke and screams.

~*~*~*~*~*~

On their way out of Homestead, they stop in to check on the woman and her little boy to see if they’re doing okay—and to make sure they’re still alive. When they knock on the door and get no answer they share a look.

“Damnit,” Dean says.

“I know,” Sam says.

Dean stands back while he kicks the door in. The inside of the house is dark and cool as they move deeper into it. Sam does a sweep of the downstairs while Dean goes upstairs to check on things there. They’re both secretly hoping the woman packed the kid up and headed out to greener pastures with him instead of sticking around this dead end.

Sam finds the woman dead on the kitchen floor and drops his head as his hopes are dashed. She’s been dead at least twelve hours, maybe longer, and her face is splattered with blood. It looks like she died trying to heat some soup in a bent old pot, probably for her son. Sam’s gotten used to the plague-dead and seeing how they spent their last few moments; usually mothers die trying to tend their children and men die trying to minister to their wives. Most people die alone and while that’s sad in its own way, it’s people like these that are even sadder to them.

Upstairs, Dean finds the boy, Jason, in a narrow twin bed with covers pulled up to his chin. His bloody face is ashen and his hair is matted with sweat. He looks frightfully still from where Dean’s standing in the doorway.

“Poor little guy,” he says as he goes into the room, intending to wrap the boy in his blankets and take him downstairs.

He’s leaning over the still little body when he hears a bloody rattle come up from in his chest. Dean jumps at the sound just as the child’s eyes pop open and he grins at him, teeth smeared red and bloody drool oozing out the corner of his mouth.

“Boo!” he gurgles as he grabs Dean by the wrist in an astonishingly strong grip. The boy jerks his head up to try and lick Dean’s cheek with that ghoulish grin pinned on his cherubic face.

“Fuck!” Dean bellows. He yanks away from the boy even as he’s bringing his gun up. He shoots the kid in the throat and stumbles backward as the little body jerks and blood jets across the room.

Dean turns away from the spray, but not quite fast enough, and feels the salty sting as a droplet of blood catches him in the eye. He wipes furiously at it and tells himself it was sweat, he’s sweating like crazy now, adrenaline spiking through him in his shock. He doesn’t see any red on his hand when he takes it away and he doesn’t have any more blood on him, so obviously it was sweat.

He walks out of the room and bumps into Sam. “We need to burn the house,” he says. “The kid was alive and I just made a fucking mess out of him. It’s too contagious still for us to handle the body.”

“God _damnit_!” Sam snarls. This job has been one pain in the ass after another. He doesn’t say anything about burning the whole house; by this point he’s half glad to do it.

They spend the rest of their day and the early part of their night torching the neat little farmhouse that those poor people had tried to make a home out of. When they’re done, Dean gives Sam the keys to the Impala and they head back to Blue Shoe. All the way there, he tries to ignore the cold dread gnawing its way through his insides while the panic-kitten purrs sweetly inside his heart, making it shake in his chest.

 _It was sweat,_ he tells himself. _It was sweat._

~*~*~*~*~*~

That night before they turn in, Sam lays a hand on his shoulder and says, “You alright? You’ve been weird since we left that house.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Dean says. “I just hate shooting kids.”

“I know. Me, too,” Sam says. “It never gets easy.”

“Nope, but it’ll be alright, right?” 

“It always is.” 

Dean nods and then turns around and pulls Sam down for a long, hard kiss. When they break apart, he grins at Sam. “You know I love you, right?”

Sam’s smile is quick and big. “Yeah, man, I figured that out.” He lightly shoves Dean’s shoulder. “I love you, too, dude.”

“Cool,” Dean says.

“Yeah, yeah it is,” Sam says as he climbs in bed.

Dean follows him and when Sam has blown out the lamp, he reaches for his hand. “You remember the night we left Lawrence?” he says as he squeezes Sam’s fingers. “I held your hand then, too. All the way to Sioux Falls damn near it.”

Sam snorts and runs his thumb over the back of his hand. “And you say I’m a fucking girl.”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Dean says. His voice tries to catch in his throat, but he just clears it out and closes his eyes as Sam laughs softly beside him.

“G’night, Dean,” he says.

“G’night, Sammy,” Dean says.

 _It was sweat,_ he tells himself for hours after Sam has started snoring beside him.

There’s a tickle in his chest like the scratch of insect legs that says otherwise though. A tiny feeling that seems like a voice without words saying, _Don’t I know you? Haven’t we met before?_

Sometime around one in the morning Dean gets up from his place in bed beside Sam and goes to Sam’s old bedroom. In there, he finds an old notebook and a bright green colored pencil and writes Sam a note as those insect legs become more insistent, more like they’re scrabbling now. He leaves the note on his nightstand in the room he shares with Sam before he goes back to the old bedroom.

He shoves the dresser in front of the door after locking it and stuffs towels and an old shower curtain liner around the frame to seal it the best he can. Then he makes sure the window is locked. When he’s done with everything, he buries his face in Sam’s musty old pillow as those insect legs become wings. He’s burning up and shivering at the same time as those wings at last open and come tearing up his throat with a bright red flutter.

 _I do know you,_ that voice without words says. _My, how strange to meet you again. I knew your brother once…_

~*~*~*~*~*~

The plague is tired, so very tired. It’s been at this for 22 years now, its longest run ever in all its long history. It had that special shot of scientific vitamins to help it along and the plague, being the great equalizer, found there was a lot more _equalizing_ to be done in the 20 th and 21st centuries. It has become so wrapped up in humanity that in its more fanciful moments it can half imagine it is _almost_ human itself.

It has known the impure thoughts of holy men and the bright fields of gold and streams of clearest blue that live in the hidden depths of even the vilest murderers. It has relearned a very important lesson: At their most fundamental level, human beings are all alike (save a few exceptions, namely psychopaths, they’re a breed unto themselves; interesting though). There’s really no such thing as good or bad, evil or righteous; those things are from a system of beliefs built upon a solid foundation of either self-righteousness or fuck-you-ness. Some spit in the eye and others want to cradle the quivering globule in their hands, coo at it and call it moralistic. Same old, same old, including the fact the plague still has not mastered the incredibly fine art of creating _good_ analogies.

Even knowing all that it knows, it occasionally finds people that surprise it with their actions. From cowards behaving bravely to heroes curling into a ball to cry like babes; from the most depraved showing compassion, to healers using their hands to harm. It comes down to a few basic feelings in the human mind, it seems to the plague: love or fear. The plague doesn’t particularly understand either one, it only knows that those things can drive a human down one path or another better than almost anything else can, save hate. Hate is a brilliant motivator, perhaps even better than its cousin, love. Hence why humans are such peculiar creatures to it even after a few millennia or so of living inside of them.

There are standouts in any show though, like a man in Reno who drowned his sick wife and then killed their five healthy children just to be _extra_ sure. The plague got him in the end and although it was two years after that awful deed, he still blamed them. That is called being selfish and not taking responsibility for one’s own self. The plague learned that interesting tidbit from a psychologist in San Antonio and what a wonderful woman she was, despite her interest in peanut butter and her miniature collie—that was just unnatural, that’s what that was. The psychologist was a tome of information, but barely a glimmer in the darkness when all things are taken into account.

However, there have been bright spots as well: There is the woman who kissed her dying husband even though she knew she would die, too. His mouth was full of blood, but all he wanted, all he could articulate, was his last request for her to kiss him. His love may have also been selfish, but he was sick and the plague thinks that doesn’t count; he probably gets a free pass there. Her love was giving and she quite literally gave her life to give him one last kiss. There was a man who held his daughter’s hand even though her fingers fell off while he was doing so because she asked him not to let go. His love was beautiful, in its way, giving and whole and not concerned with much other than giving comfort.

Then there are the Winchester boys and the plague can’t figure them out. They’re brothers, but their love is also different than that; it’s like the man with his daughter—familial, but it’s also like the woman with her husband—romantic. It’s a strange crystalline thing that doesn’t allow for anyone else to be near its core; they won’t allow it.

Inside their crystal structure, there is only room for Sam and Dean at the heart. That is how the plague sees it, too; a crystal. It’s faceted and lovely to behold, but foreboding all the same; all of those edges are sharpened to keep intruders at bay. They built it themselves out of years and skinned knees, tears, laughter, fumblings in the dark and kisses while standing knee-deep in the snow. It molded itself around them and inside of them and _through_ them. The plague can see it like pale blue cords binding them together, leading from one to the other and back again until the plague can’t tell where it begins with Dean and ends with Sam or vice versa.

It found Sam first; it remembers that and in that boy lived a shameful version of this love it has found again. A dulled down shame that it learned had blossomed phosphor-fire bright inside of him when he first realized it. Dean’s love came slower, his love like it is now, but come it did and they’ve built a house out of nothing more than their love for one another. The plague can taste it in every rattling exhalation from Dean Winchester’s throat. It can feel his sadness, too, so deep it reaches past his bones to something no one, not even the plague, can see.

Dean Winchester coughs and he bleeds and he hangs onto thoughts of Sam, his Sammy, as tears of pain and anger and refusal to get off the ride even if his time is up run down his face. He rages against his helplessness and feels guilty for leaving Sam behind—what will he do without him? Dean doesn’t want to go and the plague finds that it doesn’t want to take him, but he doesn’t have that _something_ and its hooks are already in him too deeply to release. It has understood the concept of love for a long time, but here in its final stretch before it must sleep again, it’s finally starting to understand it as an emotion, as a state of being and living, instead of a mere abstraction. 

For the first time in maybe two thousand years, the plague says, _I’m sorry_.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam wakes the next morning to silence in the house and cold sheets. He doesn’t think much of it; Dean usually gets up pretty early after a burn where Sam tends to sleep like a dead man. He stretches and yawns then pushes himself into a sitting position to stare blearily down at the blankets until he feels like he can stand up without falling over. Burns always wear him out like nothing else does and Homestead was a real sonofabitch of a job. With a huff, Sam gets out of bed and pulls on a pair of jeans and his boots; ready to start the day… mostly. Coffee should take care of the rest.

It’s only as he’s walking out of the room that he sees the sheet of paper lying on Dean’s nightstand. Sam raises his eyebrows and goes to get it. As he reads, his heart falls and seems to stop on the way down.

> _I’m sick. Think it happened yesterday when I popped that kid. Don’t you dare try to come in here though. If I died knowing I killed you… Do it and I’ll haunt your ass, leave it at that._
> 
> _Look, I know you’re not going to want to do it, but I’m asking you to anyway. After you read this, shoot me. I don’t want to leave you, man, but I don’t got no choice in the matter. I fucked up and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Sammy._
> 
> _I love you, don’t you ever forget that._
> 
> _Dean_

Sam sucks in a deep, shuddering breath and thinks about how the blood was sprayed all over the place from where Dean shot the kid in the throat. They were wearing their protective masks and Dean didn’t have any on him, but one little drop in the wrong place and _bam!_ , instant infection with pneumonic plague. Sam moans low in the back of his throat, but doesn’t actually hear the sound. Dean’s got the coughing plague; the worst of them all in Sam’s opinion and it’s in his brother now.

“No, no, no,” Sam mutters as he walks out of the bedroom intent on doing exactly what Dean asked him not to do.

He’s heading to Dean’s old room when he hears the muffled sounds of coughing coming from his instead. He goes back and tries the door but can’t get it open. “Dean!” Sam yells as he pounds on the heavy wood. The knob is locked and when he throws his shoulder against it, he hears a thud from the other side. Dean’s gone to great lengths to keep him out and Sam beats on the door harder. “Dean!” he screams before he can stop himself.

“Stop, Sammy!” Dean’s voice is a wet, broken rasp and Sam can barely hear him.

“No, I won’t stop,” Sam says as he fights for breath.

He hears a volley of wet coughs coming from the other side of the door and Dean moans in pain. Sam’s knees feel like they’re made of water and he almost falls. He can feel something tearing loose inside of him, in the center of his chest and the middle of his mind. With the coughing plague there’s some chance for survival, but not much. He’s listening to his brother, best friend, lover; his _everything_ dying on the other side of the door and there’s nothing he can do about it. He kicks the door hard and listens to it rattle a bit, but it doesn’t budge.

“Sam, _stop_ ,” Dean says in that wet cotton voice of his. “Please, stop. I’m sorry.”

Sam leans his forehead against the door and lets his shoulders shake all they want, he’s about as aware of that as he is the Earth’s rotation around the sun. “It’s not your fault,” Sam says.

After a minute, he pushes away from the door and goes to get his gun. He’s got two bullets left in the clip and hopes that’ll be enough. With another shuddering breath, Sam walks outside and goes to his old bedroom window to look in at Dean.

That ripped something in his chest comes free when he sees Dean laying on his side and looking right back at him. His face is waxy grey and splattered with blood. Blood is all over the sheets and running out the side of his mouth. It’s Dean’s eyes that get him; they’re so sad and _sorry_ that Sam wants to scream.

He only presses his face to the glass though, leaning in as close to Dean as he can get, and shakes his head. He’s got the gun tucked in the waist of his jeans, but he can’t kill him; he cannot look into his brother’s eyes and pull the trigger despite what he has asked of him. Sam can only stand there, stare in at Dean and mouth, _I can’t_ at him. Dean mouths back, _It’s okay_ , just like he always has when Sam is scared or upset. Then he doubles up with another coughing fit and Sam almost hits the ground.

He stands like that all day long, watching Dean slip further and further away from him. Sometime around dusk his eyes finally close and he watches Dean sleep or whatever he can manage in his agony. That hollowed-out place where something tore loose earlier is full of cold, gnawing pain as Sam watches Dean shiver and shake and sweat and bleed and _die_ in front of him a little more with every minute that drags by.

The sun sets and the ghosts come out to relive their own deaths in the moonlight. Sam doesn’t need to see them to know they’re there. The air is cold at night anyway, but it’s colder when they come out from hiding in this house of secrets. He remembers Dean waking him one June night and telling him there was someone outside. Sam had watched the ghosts again for the first time in years and told Dean what little he knew. The next day had been when they moved into John’s old room. It was for the bigger bed, yes, but also to finally escape the spirits outside the window. Now they’re right behind him, playing at death while the real thing is on the other side of the glass.

Sam beats his hands against the window frame and makes a sound like an animal howling. It rumbles up his throat and hums in his clenched teeth, barely escaping his mouth. He thinks if he lets it go then he may never stop and he doesn’t want Dean to hear him screaming; he won’t do that to him.

Sunrise brings Dean even paler than before, paler than Sam thought he could get, and he’s so bloody he can barely believe his chest is still rising and falling. His wan face is tense with pain, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he fights to breathe through the blood oozing out of his mouth even still. Sam swallows hard and nods to himself before tapping at the glass.

“Dean?” Sam says loud enough to be heard through the glass. The sound of his own voice startles him. It’s hard for Dean to force his eyes open, Sam can tell, and that he even heard him is some kind of cruel miracle. He does it though and he looks right at Sam with fever-glassy eyes. Sam smiles at him and it hurts, God, it hurts so bad. “Are you sure?” he makes himself ask.

Dean nods and mouths, _Yes_ and Sam nods back even though he feels like he’s choking.

“Okay,” Sam says. “Okay,” he says again, mostly to himself this time.

Dean closes his eyes when he sees the gun and Sam watches his lips move, _G’night, Sammy_.

“G’night, Dean.” Sam pulls the trigger and listens to the sound of glass shattering all around and inside of him.

He drops the gun and turns away, refusing to look at what he’s just done. He stumbles away from the window, moving blindly and only stops when he stumbles into the creek and goes to his knees in the icy water. He feels the skin split and knows he’s undoubtedly bleeding, but sure, that’s fine, that’s a-okay. He needs to wait at least six hours, preferably twelve, for the risk of infection to be gone. He recites that to himself like a laundry list, like a mantra.

Sometime or other, Sam gets out of the creek, but he doesn’t know when. One minute he’s there and the next he’s crouched down in the backyard with his hands over his ears and Dean’s dead. Dean’s dead and there is nothing else for Sam to love; his love is all gone now, lying in a bloody bed never to come back. No one will ever touch his mouth in the dark or poke him in the ribs until he wakes up. He will never again hear Dean’s laughter or bad jokes or feel the way he shivers when Sam kisses him behind the ear. He will never feel Dean’s fingers tangling in his hair or see the way the light turns his eyes into green-gold glass again. There is nothing left because Dean’s dead and Sam’s alone, alone, alone. His heart has somehow come back to its place in his chest and it breaks over and over and over until he can hear the echo of it ringing in his ears like a high, whining hum.

The sun is setting and Sam’s feet are full of pins and needles, his calves quivering with strain and threatening to cramp when that other torn thing, the one in his mind, comes loose completely. It sails off into the ether like a piece of tornado-caught tin and in the light of the rising crescent moon, Sam wraps his fingers in his hair and screams at last.

In the back of his mind he hears, _Boy, why are you crying?_ and this time all it does is make him scream louder.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam finally gets up and falls right back down again when his calf and thigh muscles spasm and seize in vicious cramps. He rolls around on the lawn in agony until the pain lets go. Then he gets up, goes to the shed and gets a pick and shovel. He moves like a machine, not really here, but not entirely gone either. He’s shut himself down enough to be able to move, to be able to get things done, because be damned if he’s going to leave Dean in the bedroom like that.

He goes around to the bedroom window since the door is barricaded and uses his hands to finish busting out the panes of glass so he can reach through and unlock it. He cuts his hands all to pieces, but he only feels it enough to quietly hope he hits an artery. No such luck though and he gets the window open and climbs through into the bedroom. It stinks, but Sam doesn’t pay it that much attention. He’s smelled enough blood and sickness to not be bothered by it so long as he doesn’t spend too long thinking about who this body belonged to. He unblocks the door and carries on working in the dark by feel, finding where the shadows are the deepest. He brushes Dean’s shoulder with his bloody fingertips and almost screams again, but he sucks it up and finishes wrapping his body.

Dean is cold and heavy in Sam’s arms when he lifts him, he’s been working out for years and he still nearly falls down. He’s weak from his grief and dead weight is the heaviest kind of weight. Still, he carries his brother through the house and into the kitchen where he lays him out on the table and washes him the best he can in the dark. He tries not to feel the hole where the bullet tore through his beautiful skull.

When he’s finished, he wraps Dean again and takes him down into the unfinished basement. Then back up the stairs he goes to get the pick and shovel so that he may begin to dig his brother’s grave. He refuses to take Dean too far away and he can’t burn him, he just can’t do it; shooting him was the last of Sam’s reserves there.

It takes him hours to dig the grave deep enough to suit him and by the time he has laid Dean to rest in it and raked the last of the dirt back in on him, Sam is exhausted. He lies down beside the grave and falls into a dead sleep; part tiredness, but mostly the kind of sleep that’s special code for _escape_.

He sleeps nearly twenty-four hours straight and when he wakes up, it hits him like a runaway train all over again. Sam shakes his head to clear his thoughts and looks at the mound of dark earth that’s barely illuminated in the weak morning light leaking down the basement stairs. He thinks Dean looks cold. Dean never did like the cold as much as Sam and always wore more layers than a prairie wife even into early summer.

“I’ll get you a blanket,” Sam tells him. Then he gets up, ignores the aches in his cut hands and sore, strained muscles, and goes upstairs. He takes the Lawrence quilt, threadbare, stained and worn, but still warm, off the back of the sofa and goes back to cover Dean with it.

He sits in the cool dark with him for a while before he gets up again and says, “I need to go clean up and then I think I’m going to go for a walk.” He turns to leave, stops and says, “What? Oh, yeah, okay, I’ll bring him down here.”

He goes back to the living room and gets Barkley, a hammer and a nail. He hangs the picture on the wall above Dean’s grave and stands back. “How’s that? Good? Cool, I’m glad you like it.”

Then he turns away and goes to bathe and clean himself up. His head clears a little while he’s in the bath and it makes him want to scream all over again. He mutters to himself for a long time, nonsense mostly, but there are bits of conversation, too. By the time Sam comes back to himself, it’s past lunchtime and his bathwater is cold, his skin pruny with it. He just dries off, gets dressed in clean clothes and at long last bandages his cut up hands. He’s a little disappointed to see that they don’t look the least bit infected.

Sam is well aware of the gun outside the window where he dropped it yesterday and he knows there’s one bullet left. He thinks very hard about using it while he makes himself a meal of smoked venison and scrambled eggs. He chokes it down without tasting it and decides he is going for that walk he mentioned. He thinks maybe he’ll take a long one, all the way into Blue Shoe itself. Maybe further. Maybe right off the edge of the world where reality has run off to.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After that day, Sam takes longer and longer walks, staying gone until he’s about to fall over from exhaustion. He tries to make it back by nightfall, but sometimes he doesn’t manage, only creeping back downstairs with apologies on his lips near dawn of the following day. Once Dean has accepted his apology, Sam lies down beside him and tells him what all he saw on his walk; a fox, a wolf, a hog, beautiful flowers and a dead doe in the woods.

His feet blister and peel and fill his boots with blood until the blisters heal and hard calluses form in their place. Sam eats, he sleeps and he walks, and talks to Dean when he is finally still before he falls into uneasy sleep beside him. He’s living, but he is not alive. He sleeps with one arm thrown across the grave, holding Dean just like he always has. The one bullet he has left whispers to him a little louder each day. The only reason he hasn’t taken his medicine, the cure for making this pain _stop_ , is because he knows Dean would want him to live. Sam is really starting to think he can’t keep that promise much longer.

Sometimes, on the rare occasions he doesn’t walk, he sits in the kitchen. He spends the day there, only moving to go through the motions of eating, drinking, voiding his bladder or bowels when need be. He watches the sunlight over the kitchen sink filling the window with gold from the east in the morning and creeping shadows from the west in the evening. They stretch out like rubber bands until they snap and disappear and the sink is filled with silver-blue moonlight. It looks so cold and clear, like the finest water, that Sam wants to cup it in his hands and drink until he forgets even his own name.

He’s gone mad here in the blue granite house and he knows it. He lost his mind the day he euthanized Dean and his lonely heartache is only destroying him more with every week that passes. He’s waiting for it to chew through his honor for what Dean would’ve wanted so he can finally flip his kill-switch. It’s a hard wait.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam wakes one night at the kitchen table to a loud thunderstorm. It startles him from a soft, rotten at the core dream where Dean is telling him, _You’re dead now, Sammy. How about that? It’s boring here without you and I miss your stupid face._

“I’m sorry,” Sam says as he lurches to his feet. His shadow crawling up the wall startles him and he slaps at it, works his fingers around the edges, trying to find the seams. 

_Boy, why are you crying?_

“I didn’t know I was,” Sam says as he wipes at his wet face. He’s cried a lot since that day, so much so that he really would feel like a _fucking girl_ if he was aware of it three-quarters of the time. He knows why he’s crying this time though, this one time the answer is easy. Dean’s dead and he’s never coming back. That’s been the answer for months now though, hasn’t it? Sure it has, of course it has.

Sam splashes water on his face and goes downstairs to Dean. “Sorry, I fell asleep at the table,” he says as he settles beside him on the cold dirt.

He uses his side of the quilt to cover up with then rolls over to loop his arm around Dean’s waist. If he closes his eyes, he can actually feel warm, soft skin under his arm instead of damp, cold dirt. It’s getting easier to imagine Dean is really beside him instead of about seven feet underground. Sam breathes in the scent of Dean’s skin and sighs, content for a little while.

“I had a dream about you,” he murmurs with his mouth pressed between what he’s sure are Dean’s shoulders. “I was dead and you missed me. It’s the other way around, I know, but let’s pretend for a little while that none of it’s true.”

 _Sure, Sammy,_ Dean says.

Sam bites his bottom lip so hard it bleeds. “You’re not real, Dean was never this agreeable. Stop it, stop pretending. _Be real or leave me alone!_ ”

_Shut the fuck up and go to bed, man. Damn. Why are you bitching?_

Sam smiles and lets himself drift off to sleep again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam’s out walking one day, down the road that will take him to what used to be a waystation between Blue Shoe (which was only ever a bump in the road) and Casper. The place is called Fort Temple, which is a stupid name since there’s neither a fort nor a temple there and never has been according to the book of Wyoming history Sam read when he was seventeen or so. Apparently the town founders thought it sounded _fancy_. Even mostly insane, Sam still thinks that’s funny, hell, maybe even funnier than it was before. That’s the beauty of insanity, it takes the merely amusing and makes it fucking hilarious. It’s kind of like a magic trick, a very special one only a few with defective psyches know about.

“Shh, it’s a _secret_ ,” Sam whispers to a wolf peering at him from the forest’s edge. They have plenty to eat, so he’s not worried about being lunch and there’s a 50/50 chance the wolf isn’t really there at all. He’s started to hallucinate a little bit these last couple of weeks. He’s seen some damned interesting things, too. It’s just an upgrade in his seat on the crazy train.

 _Crazy train_ makes Sam think of Ozzy Osbourne, which makes him think of Dean and he frowns so suddenly he feels his mouth yank down hard. For some reason, that makes him laugh again and, before he knows or is really aware of it, he’s crying at the same time. He’s a one-man representation of a Black Sabbath song now and it’s hysterical. No, really, it’s _so funny_. Sam laughs until his stomach hurts and cries until his face looks like it has been glazed with clear enamel.

Sam has become a man fumbling around in the dark, looking for a light switch to chase the gloom away. But there is no light and those are the actions of a desperate man.

“I _cannot do this_ anymore,” he says through his sobbing laughter. He turns his wet, smiling face skyward and holds his arms out at his sides, begging the ghost-gods of his mind to send lightning to strike him down.

Still, he keeps walking, one foot in front of the other, as the saying goes. It’s become a compulsion; he has to make it to where he’s going before he can go back home to Dean and sleep. That’s all there is to it.

He’s standing in the cracked, weed-choked parking lot of Fort Temple’s only bank when he hears it and he thinks he’s hallucinating again. Someone a street over is coughing, he thinks he can hear them crying and Sam giggles.

“Stop it, that’s inappropriate,” he admonishes himself. One mustn’t mock their imagination lest it turn on them.

He’s walked about forty miles and he’s ready to go home—his day’s goal has been reached—but he can walk another couple of miles in the name of satisfying his curiosity. He goes to investigate, secretly hoping he’ll find Dean in some overgrown backyard with a nose full of dust and pollen choking him and making him cough.

What he finds is a girl with long, black hair that hangs down her back in snarled ringlets. She’s on a sagging porch with her hand over her mouth and a bag sitting at her feet. A newcomer then, someone who has come to try and settle into Fort Temple to start a happy new half-life. Interesting, Sam thinks as he wanders up the walk toward her. She’s a bit too late to make much of a home for herself here if the bright red between the seams of her fingers is anything to go by. Oh, well, that’s how it goes.

The girl looks up and slumps against the wall behind her before her strength gives out completely and she hits the splintered boards. “Help me, Reaper,” she says.

“Hello,” Sam says back. It takes him a minute to figure out what she really just said and then he says, “Oh. What do you want?”

“Kill me, you fucking moron,” she snaps at him. “I’m sick.” Sick she may be, but she’s feisty.

Sam stops and stares at her blankly. She wants him to kill her, if he doesn’t then she’s going to die a terrible death, but he only has one bullet left. A conundrum then. Then again, maybe not. The woman’s not so sick yet that she doesn’t have enough sense left to look at him a little wall-eyed and try to scoot back even more. He looks insane and there’s no getting around it. 

Sam rocks back on his heels and grins up at the sky again, all teeth, more of a delighted grimace than an actual smile. “Sure, I’ll help you, but I need you to do me a favor first,” he says as he looks back down and starts walking toward her. He takes his gun from the waist of his jeans and lets it hang by his side as he walks up the creaking steps.

“What?” she croaks around a mouthful of blood. She’s shaking, in pain and terrified; both of what’s happening to her and of this crazy giant of man standing over her.

Sam leans down and smiles even bigger, all dimples and delight. “I want you to cough on me,” he whispers in her ear.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam leaves the girl lying on the porch with her brains leaking between the weathered boards, all of her dreams and ambitions turning into dirt for the bugs to eat. He licks his lips to gather the rest of her blood from them as he practically skips off down the road toward home. He runs when he can find the energy to do so and walks as fast as his tired legs will carry him the rest of the way.

He makes it back to the blue granite house in record time and goes about drawing himself a bath. When he’s clean, he dresses in his best clothes, which aren’t great, but they’re good enough. He turns the chickens and Bessie II loose to be free or become wolf food, then he goes downstairs to lie beside Dean.

“I figured it out,” Sam tells him. “I thought it was the bullet, but it was the blood all along.”

Dean just murmurs wordlessly at him and Sam closes his eyes. He feels Dean’s lips brushing over his cheeks soft as cream, down his jaw and finally to his mouth. _Hey, Sammy,_ he says as he traces his fingers along Sam’s ribs one by one.

“I miss your skin. I miss _you_ ,” Sam says. “I’m sorry, I know you didn’t want me to, but I _had_ to.”

 _Shh, I know. It’s alright,_ Dean whispers back.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Night bleeds into day same as it always does and Sam lies beside Dean, waiting. He feels it as an itch in his chest at first and he smiles as that wordless voice stirs to life inside of him one last time.

_Sam Winchester. Hello, again. Are we well met this time? It seems so. How very sad._

“We are, yeah,” Sam answers. Dean’s fingers are starting to comb through his hair and he shivers at the feeling. “What do you know about sadness though?”

 _I know what love is now,_ that voice answers him. Pictures, mental movies, of Dean roll through Sam’s mind. Some of them are of Sam though, like they’re being shown from Dean’s point of view. 

“What does love have to do with sadness?” Sam whispers as Dean’s lips trail cold fire down his neck to his chest.

 _Love is sorrow,_ the voice answers.

Sam takes one last deep breath and shudders all over as the itch in his chest unfurls into wings so big and bright and red that all he knows is happiness. He reaches for Dean’s hand and smiles into the darkness when he laces his fingers through his.

**

The Rest is Silence

**


End file.
